The Ministry of Corrections and Metropolitan Regions in Nevada holds the names of immigrants and documented immigrants in their custody, citing data protection concerns. However, opponents of immigration say that information for the public is the keys to understand what happens with undocumented people, commit crimes.
The Las Vegas Review journal submitted an inquiry in November to question the names of all prison and prison inmates in the subway region with immigration and customs authorities and whether these occupants had committed a previous crime. The Department of Corrections published similar information for an article in 2019 that shows how repeat offices are only released from prison in order to prove in Nevada.
This time, however, the agency published a list of almost 700 inmates with all names. The data showed that 137 of them had earlier crimes before their current detention in a prison in Nevada. Metro denied the request that the agency has no reaction -fast recording and cites the federal law.
Maria Espinoza, National Director and co -founder of the Remembrance Project, a non -profit organization, emphasizes cases of people who are killed by immigrants without papers, said the state had to release the details of immigrants without papers.
“The fact that certain agencies are not imminent and are not transparent is very worrying,” she said. “These are things for which taxpayers pay. … we talk about the security of the community and this information is very valuable for the community. “
Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American immigration reform, said his organization supported the transparency of this kind of information.
“This is the kind of things that the public should know,” he said. “The consequences (crimes by immigrants without papers) can be felt in Nevada and all over the country, and we don't know why they are hiding.”
Calls and e -mails to public information officers from the corrections were not returned.
Legal justification questioned
In the document letter in which the names “privacy” were rejected and welcomed it with two decisions of the Supreme Court of Nevada. The letter in the Clark County School District against Las Vegas Review journal decision by Clark County states that the Common Law of Nevada is the interests of privacy as part of the Open Records Act and the Las Vegas Metro Police Dept v. Las Vegas Review journal protects “Data protection rights in a laundry list of areas”.
However, the review journal Chief Lit Lipman said that the correction department does not pursue state law.
“The law requires a quote for the specific legal authority that makes the information confidential,” he said. “Only quote two cases in which the general statement is determined that in some cases data protection rights to enable information to keep information confidentially without quoting anything that says that the actual information is confidential is an obvious violation of the law on Public records in Nevada. “
The names of people who were convicted of crimes are clearly public information, said Lipman.
“There is nothing in the law that indicates that the government can hide from the public. The names of people who have been convicted,” he added.
Taxpayers pay around 35,000 US dollars a year for inmates, which would be around 24 million US dollars a year for all occupants in the list of immigration authorities in the correction department.
Other agencies publish information
The review journal sent similar inquiries to Henderson, North Las Vegas and the Clark County Detention Center.
Henderson and North Las Vegas published lists of inmates that were released from their prisons in ice custody.
Metro's police said they do not say any records that indicate which people have ice cream and whether they have earlier crimes. The agency also cited the federal government law that they said “information about depreciated extraterrestrials that are imprisoned confidentially”. The evaluation journal continues to fight for this information.
People in prison are often waiting for the process, while people in the state prison were convicted of one or more crimes, which means that the information from convicts is more important to understand why people who are illegal in the country can remain or return to crimes.
Espinoza, who said her father was legally immigrated to Mexico, said that the officials should urge to publish such information instead of hiding them.
“The governor and his entire team and the state legislature should be,” she said. “You should call these agencies.”
The “What are you hiding?” The column was founded to inform Nevadans about transparency laws of informing readers about the review of journal reports, which are disabled by bureaucracies and contribute civil servants to be open with the hard-working people who pay all the government. Have you wrongly refused access to public records? Share your story with us at whataretheyhiding@reviewjournal.com.
Contact Arthur Kane at akane@reviewjournal.com and follow and follow @Arthurmkane On Twitter. Kane is the publisher of the review team of the review journal and focuses on the reporting that blames executives and agencies and uncovered misconduct.