Former Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph is heading back home to Charlotte, just months after moving up to Washington to work for federal immigration officials.

Pendergraph’s resignation – to spend more time with his family, he said – comes a few weeks after he criticized U.S. Rep. David Price’s budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in comments to a local news agency, reports Barb Barrett.

Such out-of-school remarks about congressional budgets are considered a political no-no on Capitol Hill. (Some political observers will recall that National Parks police chief Teresa Chambers – a former police chief in Durham – was fired in 2004 after complaining to The Washington Post about the parks police budget.)

Pendergraph, a Democrat and strong supporter of workplace enforcement, began work in Washington last fall to help coordinate federal and local efforts. He complained in July to a Durham television program that the 2009 congressional appropriations bill didn’t include enough money for job site crackdowns.

Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, had chosen to focus spending on finding and deporting illegal immigrants already convicted of crimes. Price is chairman of the homeland security spending subcommittee, and so in charge of writing the bill for ICE’s funding.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials quickly called Price’s office to distance themselves from Pendergraph’s remarks. A spokesman said Pendergraph wasn’t authorized to give opinions about the budget.

Pendergraph told The Charlotte Observer the dust-up had no impact on his decision to leave Washington.

“That was a couple months ago,” he said. “That issue has nothing to do with my decision to resign and come home to Charlotte.”

Hat tip: Charlotte Observer

Correction: An earlier post incorrectly listed Pendergraph as a Republican. 

U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick wants immigration officials to clarify their position that illegal immigrants can be admitted to North Carolina's community colleges.

Myrick, who has made illegal immigration a key cornerstone of her work in Congress, wrote Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Julie Myers last week that the federal law appears to disagree, Barb Barrett reports.

The statute, Myrick wrote, says that North Carolina would have to specifically pass a law allowing undocumented residents to be admitted to the colleges.

And even so, Myrick continued, the colleges could not allow in-state tuition.

Myrick's letter comes after a scuffle about whether community colleges can allow illegal immigrants as students. N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper wrote a memo saying they couldn't. The N&O asked the federal government for clarification and was told that the decision can be made on a school-by-school basis.

"I am concerned that ICE's stated position conflicts with the intent of federal law and undermines ICE's recent progress to enforce immigration laws," Myrick wrote.

She asked Myers, an assistant secretary within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for a response.