Local Law Enforcement play a more active role in Illegal
Alien Arrests
While lawmakers in Washington debate whether to forgive illegal immigrants their
trespasses, a small but increasing number of local and state law enforcement officials are
taking it upon themselves to pursue deportation cases against people who are here
illegally.
In more than a dozen jurisdictions, officials have invoked a little-used 1996
federal law to seek special federal training in immigration enforcement for their
officers.
In other places, the local authorities are flagging some illegal immigrants who are caught
up in the criminal justice system, sometimes for minor offenses, and taking it upon
themselves to alert immigration officials to their illegal status so that they can be
deported.
In Costa Mesa, Calif., for example, in Orange County, the City Council last year shut down
a day laborer job center that had operated for 17 years, and this year authorized its
Police Department to begin training officers to pursue illegal immigrants- a job
previously left to federal agents.
In Suffolk County, on Long Island, where a similar police training proposal was met with
angry protests in 2004, county officials have quietly put a system in place that uses
sheriff's deputies to flag illegal immigrants in the county jail population.
In Putnam County, N.Y., about 50 miles north of Manhattan, eight illegal immigrants who
were playing soccer in a school ball field were arrested on Jan. 9 for trespassing and
held for the immigration authorities.
As an example of the uneven results that sometimes occur in such cross-hatches of local
and federal law enforcement, the seven immigrants who were able to make bail before those
agents arrived went free. The one who could not make bail in time, a 33-year-old roofer
and father of five, has been in federal detention in Pennsylvania ever since.
"I took an oath to protect the people of this county, and that means enforcing the
laws of the land," said Donald B. Smith, the Putnam County sheriff. "We have a
situation in our country where our borders are not being adequately protected, and that
leaves law enforcement people like us in a very difficult situation."
Other local law enforcement officials expressed similar frustration at the apparent
inability of the federal government to stem the rise in illegal immigration. It is a
frustration they say has been growing in the last few years, and is now reaching a point
of crisis.
During that time, a number of coinciding trends may have added to the sense that there has
been a breach in the covenant between the local and federal authorities, according to
interviews with immigration officials, police and advocates. These trends include a
housing boom that attracted growing numbers of illegal workers, especially to distant
suburbs and exurbs, where federal resources are especially thin; an apparent stagnation in
the size of the federal immigration police force, which has remained at about 2,000 for
several years; and increasing local opposition to illegal immigration, again, especially
in the suburbs.
Federal statistics do not measure the number of immigration arrests and deportations that
occur because of local intervention. Officials with the United States Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agency said the roughly 160,000 illegal immigrants deported last year
represented a 10 percent increase over the year before — and a national record —
but they could not say how many had been referred by the local authorities.
Until fairly recently, it was viewed as inappropriate, even unconstitutional, for the
local or state authorities to be involved in the enforcement of federal law. In Los
Angeles, the police still operate under an internal rule that says "undocumented
alien status is not a matter for police enforcement." Similar policies apply in San
Francisco and New York City.
But that may be changing, partly because the local authorities have decided to play a more
active role and partly because of an unabashed call from the federal government seeking
help from states and localities.
"The untold story of immigration law is that there are just not enough federal
immigration officers to enforce the immigration laws we have," said Kris W. Kobach, a
law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who as a counsel in the Justice
Department worked on several cooperative agreements with state and local law enforcement
agencies.
"The only way our programs can work is with help from local law enforcement, and
we're expecting to see that happening more and more," he said.
To make that happen, law enforcement officials have increasingly been looking to a federal
statute, the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act. It allows the local and state
authorities to reach agreements with the federal immigration and customs agency to train
their officers — in a four-week crash course — to be virtual immigration agents,
able to conduct citizenship investigations and begin deportation proceedings against
illegal immigrants.
The law went virtually un-tried in its first five years on the books. Then Florida had 60
state agents and highway officers trained in 2002, and Alabama did the same for about 40
state troopers in 2003. In the next two years, the Arizona corrections department and the
Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties in California each had a few dozen officers
trained.
Indicating a new sense of urgency, though, 11 additional state and county jurisdictions
have applied to enter the program in the past year alone, according to a spokesman for
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Michael W. Gilhooly. He would not specify which they
were, but public officials in Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona and about a dozen additional
counties in California, Texas and North Carolina have publicly expressed interest in the
program.
Local officials involved in these initiatives say they are mainly targeting hardened
criminals in the immigrant population — people like gang members and sexual predators
who have been the recent target of sweeps by federal immigration agents.
Federal immigration officials, however, maintain that the vast majority of illegal
immigrants detained and deported are people convicted or charged with serious crimes.
There are simply not enough immigration agents to respond every time a suspected illegal
immigrant is arrested for driving with an invalid license, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman
for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Daniel W. Beck, the sheriff of Allen County, Ohio, 100 miles northwest of Columbus, said
calling immigration agents is no guarantee of action. "When people drive without
licenses, when they are in this country illegally, it's really a right and wrong issue. I
will arrest them," Mr. Beck said. "Unfortunately, by the time a federal agent
gets here, they are sometimes already bailed out of jail."
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