New York:

Federal authorities expect to identify and deport more than 200,000 immigrants this year who are convicted criminals serving time in prisons and jails across the United States, the country's top federal immigration enforcement official said Monday.

The effort to speed up the deportation of foreign-born criminals, a large percentage of whom are Jamaicans, is part of a campaign by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to help federal and state prisons reduce the costs of housing immigrants, said Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security and head of the agency.

In 2007, Ms. Myers said, ICE brought formal immigration charges against 164,000 immigrants who are behind bars nationwide for crimes committed in the U.S. Many of those immigrants are still in the United States and are also slated for deportation this year, she said.

By comparison, in 2006, the agency identified 64,000 immigrants behind bars, most of whom were deported.

The big increase in deportations will place "a significant burden", on ICE's detention centres, she said, and on the aeroplanes, mostly from the Justice Department, used by the agency to fly immigrants back to their home countries. Last year, the U.S. Congress authorised $200 million for programmes to deport immigrant criminals.

Under current law, immigrants convicted of crimes are deported only after serving their sentences in the U.S. Foreigners behind bars, Ms. Myers said, include large numbers of immigrants who were legal residents, but lost their legal status as a result of being convicted of crimes.