He was brought into Mecklenburg County Jail this weekday morning on a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia. Like all suspects, he was asked two questions. Were you born in the U.S.? Are you a U.S. citizen?

The answer to each was no.

James Pendergraph had found another one.

More than 960 deportable immigrants have been rooted out from the Mecklenburg jail population since April, when the county's sheriff became an official partner with the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. "That's just me, by myself," he says.

He is the man who sends the illegal immigrants home.

He is the first sheriff east of California to sign up for an ICE program known as 287(g), which trained 12 of his staffers to work full-time identifying and processing deportable immigrants.

He is a bit of a rising star in immigration circles, one who chastised congressmen this summer about illegal immigration, which quickly brought him some national press, which quickly brought him hundreds of e-mail messages from across the U.S. -- "none of them negative," he says.

He is 56 years old, a Mecklenburg native, a Democrat because that's what his family has always been, a suit-and-tie professional with a soft drawl that would fit behind any small-town sheriff's desk.

In Charlotte, he is one of his county's most popular public figures, a winner of seven consecutive elections, with a reputation around the courthouse as an effective administrator and something of an innovator, someone willing to see criminals for more than their crimes.

But with illegal immigration, his vision becomes more brown and white.

"We've got millions of illegal immigrants that have no business being here," he says.

Many arrested twice

Four years ago, Pendergraph had his immigration epiphany. Illegal immigrants made up 15 percent of his jail's population, staffers told him, but they knew little about them, their history, their criminal record. They were ghosts, and they were walking right out the front door.

Last summer, at a county sheriff's association meeting in Michigan, a California sheriff told him about 287(g).

Pendergraph wrote to ICE and U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, an advocate of tough immigration policy. They burrowed through red tape -- "He was dogged about it," Myrick says -- and by November, the county had its go-ahead.

Pendergraph soon learned exactly what he suspected: "That people we had arrested had been arrested before."

Since April, at least 128 illegal immigrants in Mecklenburg have been deported -- and hundreds more are pending. Two North Carolina counties -- Alamance and Gaston -- hope to start the program next year.

Meanwhile, the sheriff's own county is struggling with the complexity of illegal immigration, the uncertainty of its benefits and costs.

Some question the value of the sheriff's program, which costs $1 million a year.

"The amount of money that's going into this effort -- what is it going to accomplish in terms of total crime or the immigration issue?" says Adriana Gálvez-Taylor, a Latino advocate who helped organize a Charlotte immigration rally in the spring.

Gálvez-Taylor and others worry that 287(g) weakens a fragile relationship between law enforcement and Latinos, leaving the latter vulnerable to criminals who prey on immigrants' reluctance to contact authorities.

Says Pendergraph: "I don't get it that people can defend the illegal immigrant status." He tells critics that illegal immigrants in his jail have been accused of two crimes -- the one that got them arrested, and the misdemeanor of crossing the border.

One by one

Right now, he sees one immigrant, the overdose who has been brought in, getting photographed and fingerprinted -- each finger, both thumbs.

Little is known beyond his name, Kevin Su Lee.

Not Latino, but Korean. Although 98 percent of illegal immigrants in his jail are Latinos, it's the 2 percent, including Lee, that "spook" Pendergraph.

"He can be carrying a dirty bomb in a suitcase," he says, "or there can be two or three of them separately carrying parts to a bomb."

Kevin Su Lee has a substantial record with the immigration department -- drug convictions, using two Social Security numbers. He once spent seven years in a Virginia prison.

"A good find," Pendergraph says.