NewsChannel 5.com - Nashville, Tennessee - Nashville Deputies To Enforce Some Immigration Laws

Nashville Deputies To Enforce Some Immigration Laws

(AP) NASHVILLE - Specially trained sheriff's deputies in Nashville will soon be able to determine for themselves whether a jail inmate is in the country illegally.

The Davidson County Sheriff's Office says the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has approved its application for a federal program that provides immigration law training to local deputies and access to D-H-S immigration databases.

Once the program is up and running, checking the legal status of any foreign-born person booked into the jail will become standard procedure.

Sheriff Daron Hall is hoping this will begin within 90 days.

He requested the program last year after his office came under fire when an illegal immigrant who had been arrested multiple times on misdemeanor drunk driving charges but never deported was charged with vehicular homicide in the death of a husband and wife.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)