Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator welcomes a chance to help hurricane evacuees. But he says they also want to weed out some of the visiting criminal element.

All those who fled Hurricane Gustav had to fill out a questionnaire when they arrived at shelters in the parish, and Prator says his office then ran background checks on them.

Of the approximately 10,000 people in Caddo Parish shelters, authorities arrested about 15 people wanted on felony charges and found another 10 to 15 unregistered sex offenders. He says people may have put false information on another 1,000 forms. He says that's suspected because deputies couldn't find any records -- criminal or otherwise -- in the computers on them.

Terrence Rankins was arrested when it was found he was wanted by the New Orleans Police Department for carjacking. At least three people were wanted for parole violations.

Prator says deputies are only pursuing felonies.

But civil rights attorney Mary Howell says there's still a problem because sometimes old warrants are in the system that have been dismissed. What's worse, she says, is that such arrests will have a chilling effect on getting people to evacuate in the future.

Officials in New Orleans said they had no knowledge of the background checks. Those wishing to use the city's assisted
evacuation system had been assured they would not be pressed for identification in order to board buses out of town.

Prator says he wanted to run background checks of evacuees after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but said he was unable to. Since then, he says they've had that changed. He says they want to help people, but they also want to know who's in the community.