From the obscure but fabulously wealthy sultanate of Brunei to
the lovely Ionian and Aegean islands of Greece, illegal immigrants
the world over know they must steer clear of the local police.
From the obscure but fabulously wealthy sultanate of Brunei to the lovely Ionian and Aegean islands of Greece, illegal immigrants the world over know they must steer clear of the local police.
In almost every spot on the globe, local cops are empowered, even required, to arrest illegals and turn them over to national officials for deportation.
Almost everywhere, that is, but most parts of the United States. In this country, police often are forbidden even to inquire about the citizenship of persons they arrest or to ask for things like green cards or entry visas. Partly, that’s to encourage illegal immigrants to come forward without fear to report crimes which otherwise might go unpunished and partly that’s been so cops can concentrate on crime fighting and not worry about immigration.
The attitude of many police and most civil liberties organizations was expressed well by John Robertson, chief of police in the East Bay city of Newark, just south of Oakland. “This is a democracy,” he told a reporter for an East Coast newspaper. “It’s based on freedom and people have a right to basic dignity. That means they’re not going to be questioned just because of their appearance.”
Besides this reasoning, there’s the residue of “sanctuary” laws enacted in many California cities during the 1970s and early ’80s, when civil wars in Central American counties like Nicaragua and El Salvador caused a flurry of fear-inspired illegal immigration.
But things are about to change in California’s two most populous counties, and when they set policy it usually isn’t long before many other areas follow.
Police and sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles and Orange counties are about to start training in enforcement of federal immigration laws, for use in cases involving convicted criminals who have been previously deported only to illegally return to this country.
The trend toward using local police to help immigration officials in this way is much more radical in neighboring Arizona, where state legislators are moving ahead with a bill giving local police the power to arrest and deport anyone discovered to be in this country illegally, not just criminals.
Some police there are not happy with this new task. “It’s an unfunded mandate,” a spokesman for the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police complained. He said most departments not only lack the manpower to enforce immigration laws, but dislike the idea of subjugating themselves to federal agents, which would be necessary in processing deportations.
The California departments moving toward immigration enforcement as yet have no plans for random sweeps in areas where illegals are known to reside or congregate or work. In Orange County, for example, Sheriff Mike Carona plans to train about 500 deputies to use immigration laws, but only in larger criminal investigations.
That would mean deputies conducting gang investigations or looking into crimes of sexual predators could deport suspects who are illegal immigrants with prior convictions. Mostly likely, it would see them turning over those they find to the new U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Many cops welcome this change, because they know many gang members are deported soon after conviction for crimes, but quickly re-cross the border and return to their old haunts and their old practices.
At the same time Carona acts in Orange County, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton proposed revoking 26-year-old sanctuary-era rules under which his department made no inquiries into immigration status. Bratton would have deputies who encounter re-entered criminal immigrants call their supervisors, who would then contact the federal immigration bureau.
Bratton can’t act alone, but needs approval of his city’s police commission to make the change.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca can move on his own, and has.
“The message is simple,” he told a reporter. “If you are a convicted criminal and you are deported, you are not welcome back here. It’s a federal law violation to reenter the United States if you’re deported, and I will order my people to arrest you if you do that.”
It would be nothing really new for local police to cooperate with federal agents, as these police officials plan. They already work with federal drug and firearms agents on a routine basis when uprooting marijuana plants or intercepting shipments of cocaine and heroin.
The tricky part will be keeping the trust of the immigrant community, which has long feared that calling in police to help fight gang crimes and drug dealers will lead to mass deportations, even of legal immigrants.
Tom Elias is author of the book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It.” His email address is
td*****@ao*.com
.
