A push to deport undocumented immigrants serving time in Oklahoma prisons doesn’t mean that they won’t be required to serve out their sentences or will escape justice.
Gov. Kevin Stitt said he will review the cases of undocumented immigrants serving time in Oklahoma correctional facilities individually before deciding whether to commute any sentences so that they can be deported.
The Republican governor made the remarks Wednesday when asked how he was planning to balance victim rights and public safety with his plan to save taxpayers money by deporting undocumented criminals serving time in Oklahoma prisons.
“We’re not going to let bad people out just to make a political statement,” Stitt said. “But I also think about the tens of billions of dollars that Oklahoma taxpayers are spending to be incarcerating people that really shouldn’t be in our state anyway.”
He said the Department of Corrections has over 500 undocumented immigrants in custody.
Stitt tapped Tim Tipton, Oklahoma’s commissioner of public safety, in November to develop and launch Operation Guardian. The program aims to deport undocumented inmates incarcerated in Oklahoma prisons in coordination with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration’s mass deportation mandate.
But before anyone in state custody can be deported, Stitt must commute their sentence.
Stitt said he will consider the victims and their families to balance justice with deportation. He said he’ll look at things like country of origin, amount of time served and the type of offense to determine if justice has been served and if a commutation is warranted.
“There are people that are at the end of their sentence and they’re about to get out,” he said. “And historically, over the last four years, when we turned them over to ICE coming out, they were just back in the communities.”
Tipton said in an interview with Oklahoma Voice this week that he’s been talking with the Trump administration and visited with the country’s new “border czar” Tom Homan this past week. Oklahoma officials will be “doing our part as a state to make sure that the immigration laws are upheld,” he said.
The state will also need to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to find and deport undocumented immigrants that have been recently released from correctional facilities, Tipton said.
Oklahoma Voice reporter Barbara Hoberock contributed to this story.
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