Look at what I found in today’s OC Register! In case you missed it, the Orange County Grand Jury has recommended that seven Orange County cities should follow the OC Sheriff Department’s lead in conducting immigration checks in their city jails. And yes, this is for real.

All of Orange County’s large cities should follow the sheriff’s department lead and train officers to do immigration checks in their jails, a grand jury said today.

In a report on Sheriff Mike Carona’s new program that partnered with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the panel said the cities of Anaheim, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Orange, Fullerton and Garden Grove should have similar plans.

Carona won approval for his plan from the Board of Supervisors in March, although many civil rights groups were opposed to it because they feared it would lead to racial profiling.

Under an agreement with ICE, 14 deputies were trained to check the immigration status of inmates using federal databases. The plan also allows deputies to create a file on a foreign national and notify federal authorities that the inmate should be detained and possibly deported.

So what’s so bad about this? What’s so good about this? What’s the big deal about this? Follow me after the flip for more on this…

So why not do this? It will get dangerous criminals off our streets and back in their home countries! Why allow these thuggish illegal aliens to suck up any more taxpayer dollars while sitting in our comfortable jails? Why not just send the dirty criminals back to where they belong?

But why do this? Most of those immigrants in jail are incarcerated for rather minor crimes, like tagging a fire hydrant or riding a bicycle on the wrong side of the street. Does that merit being separated from one’s family indefinitely? Does a parking violation merit losing one’s job and one’s livelihood? These are poor, desperate workers trying to survive. Do they really deserve this draconian measure?

And what about those inmates who are here legally, but are unfairly targeted by this system? Is that a real problem that we will face in Orange County? Is it fair to be targeted on the basis of the color of one’s skin? Is it fair to be targeted on the basis of “looking like an illegal alien”?

What do you think about this program? Should the seven Orange County cities join the program? Should the OC Sheriff continue the program at county jail and cities that contract with the OC Sheriiffs?