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Rockingham County Joins Federal Program To Assist ICE In Deportations

Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page. KERI BROWN/WFDD

The Rockingham County Sheriff's Office has announced it will help federal authorities ramp up the deportation of immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally.

Sheriff Sam Page says his department will be the first in North Carolina to opt into a federal program assisting Homeland Security to deport undocumented immigrants.

The News & Record reports the program will allow officers at the Rockingham County Detention Center to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement by serving ICE federal arrest warrants on inmates. The prisoners could then be transferred directly into ICE custody.

In a news conference Wednesday, Page said the officers would only work within the jail, and would not be operating out in the community.

A number of activist groups, including the ACLU, have expressed their opposition to the federal program, saying it leads to illegal racial profiling and civil rights abuses.

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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