Guest Column
Little known, little used – Federal Immigration law 287(g) gains popularity with law enforcement departments
- Little known, little used – Federal Immigration law 287(g) gains popularity with law enforcement departments
- By Travis Loller
- Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - December 9, 2006 - State and local law enforcement officials feeling the heat from constituents frustrated over illegal immigration and crime are taking a new look at a little-used option that's been around for years.
Called 287(g) after the section of federal immigration law that created it, the program allows state and local officers to directly tap into Homeland Security databases to determine whether a person is legally in the country, instead of relying on backlogged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The program has been around since 1996, but so far only seven law enforcement agencies have implemented it. That number seems sure to grow.
Since joining the program in April, Mecklenburg, N.C., Sheriff Jim Pendergraph has fielded inquiries from sheriff's offices from Virginia to Nevada, and his 12 ICE-trained deputies spend so much time hosting delegations from other counties, they complain they can't do their work.
The Davidson County Sheriff's Office in Nashville is one agency trying to sign up. Sheriff Daron Hall said he got interested after a head-on collision that killed two people led to the arrest of an illegal immigrant.
"He had been in the jail system multiple times, and there were questions why he was not deported," Hall said.
"I thought for weeks that our staff had screwed up."
The sheriff's office already was sending the name of every foreign-born jail inmate to ICE. Hall thought the federal agency then checked each name for legal status.
But after more than a month of inquiry, ICE officials told him they only check the legal status of those accused of serious or aggravated felonies because the agency does not have the people or resources to deport every illegal immigrant arrested for any crime, he said.
Learning that his officers had done everything correctly was little comfort, especially since federal officials "don't have a face" with the people who elect Hall.
"People in this community are ultimately going to blame us anyway," Hall said
More than 30 agencies are in talks with ICE about joining the program, spokesman Michael Gilhooly said. Congress has responded to the uptick in demand by increasing 287(g) funding from $5.5 million to $50 million for fiscal year 2007.
Not everyone thinks the program is a good idea.
Felipe Ortiz, immediate past president and current board member with the National Latino Police Officers Association, said his organization worries 287(g) is a bad way for local agencies to use their limited resources.
"Do we want our officers enforcing immigration laws or arresting sex offenders and people who've committed violent crimes?" he asked.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police doesn't have a position on local agencies enforcing immigration law, according to spokeswoman Wendy Balazik. However the group is concerned that such enforcement can have a chilling effect on cooperation between police and immigrants, she said.
"We are concerned that they won't call police if they are victims of crimes and also that they won't cooperate with police to help solve crimes," she said.
Many local police departments in areas with high immigrant populations have spent considerable resources trying to earn the trust of those communities, hiring bilingual officers and creating outreach programs.
They have generally pursued a "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding the legal status of immigrants to try to cultivate them as crime-prevention allies.
Mecklenburg-Charlotte Police Chief Darrel Stephens said his department formed an International Relations Unit and has hired 65 bilingual officers since he became chief in 1999.
"It's been our practice for years with victims of crime, not to inquire about their immigration status," he said. "... It's the same for witnesses - don't ask."
Pendergraph disagrees with the approach.
"People in the country illegally are breaking the law," he said. "If they're a victim, I feel sorry for them, but if they hadn't been here in the first place it wouldn't have happened."
He is effusive about 287(g).
"Every one I deport is one you're less likely to see on the highway tonight driving drunk who's going to kill your family," he said. "... The only problem I have is I wish we could deport more - send some of our citizens somewhere."
Talk like that worries immigrant rights advocates, who are concerned that officers with the power to determine whether anyone is in the country legally will engage in racial profiling, targeting people because of the color of their skin.
"I think there's a misconception that illegals are Hispanic," said Latino police association board member Ortiz. "It's too easy to target Hispanics."
Joan Friedland, an attorney with the nonprofit National Immigration Law Center, said it's not easy to tell a person's immigration status so officers may mistakenly focus on "people who look or sound foreign."
"For example, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens," she said, "but many places it's not understood. They may look and sound foreign. They may not speak English.... U.S. citizens don't carry a document saying we are U.S. citizens."
Immigrant advocates are not the only ones concerned about the program. Even some ICE officials worry that the agency, which has long focused on deporting serious and violent felons, will be overwhelmed by requests to deport people accused of petty crimes such as trespassing and speeding.
ICE announced late last month that the partnership with Mecklenburg has resulted in nearly 1,000 suspects arrested in other crimes to be charged with immigration violations since April 6.
Orange County, Calif., sheriff's deputies last year identified 15,000 inmates suspected of being in the country illegally. The part-time ICE agent assigned to the department was able to look into only 2,000 of them.
Orange County is sending the first of 24 officers through the 287(g) training, said Sgt. Roland Chacon. If they even double the number of inmates turned over to ICE, it will be a huge increase for an agency that has detention facility funding for only 27,500 beds.
Los Angeles County, which started identifying illegal immigrants at the beginning of this year, put 2,100 immigration holds on prisoners between January and June, a 60 percent increase over the same period last year.
"The numbers we're talking about as a result of these two major programs (in California) are huge - thousands," ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said.
But, she said, the agency is preparing for the surge. Congress approved more funding for detention this fiscal year as well as last, and the agency is working hard to run people through the deportation process faster so it can house more people with the same number of beds.
Haran Lowe, an Alabama Department of Public Safety attorney, who drew up an agreement for ICE to train state troopers in 2003, said the federal agency's efforts may not be enough.
"Let's face it," he said. "With 12 million illegal
immigrants in the country, we could probably flood them without too much
trouble."
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