Reps. tell Obama to let police arrest illegal immigrants
Posted on Wednesday, October 28 @ 02:32:49 EDT
Topic: Barack Obama Campaign for President
|
 More than 50 lawmakers, including all five GOP House members from Orange County, have written to President Barack Obama asking him not to restrict the ability of local police to arrest illegal immigrants.
Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano – a former Arizona governor- recently set limits on local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration laws, saying that they should limit their efforts to immigrants who have committed serious crimes.
Subjects = Illegal Immigration, 287g, letter to President Obama, Rep. Lamar Smith, ICE, DHS, Napolitano, Sheriff Arpaio
October 27, 2009
Dena Bunis
Orange County Register Communications
“The Obama administration should not politicize this highly effective immigration enforcement and public safety’’ said Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who drafted the letter to Obama. It was signed by 53 Republicans and one Democrat, Heath Shuler of North Carolina. Click here to read the letter.
Smith, along with former Orange County Rep. Christopher Cox, co-authored the so-called 287g provision of immigration law. That measure allows local police and sheriff’s department to sign an agreement with federal officials to help enforce immigration laws.
Orange County has such an agreement that gives the Sheriff’s Department the ability to screen jail inmates and turn over illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement once they have served their sentences.
Sheriff’s Department spokesman John McDonald said the department is still negotiating with federal officials on a new agreement that would comply with Napolitano’s new guidelines.
So far this year 45,741 inmates at the Orange County jail have been screened and 2,383 have been turned over to federal immigration officials.
McDonald said the fact that only 6 percent of those turned over to ICE has wound up back at the jail shows the program is successful. That 6 percent, he said, is far less than the recidivism rate of general population inmates.
The DHS secretary just might be doing something right given that Republicans are complaining that her new rules will hamstring law enforcement while immigration advocates are also critical of her for not ending the 287G program.
“Thanks to the 287 G program, Smith says, “thousands of illegal immigrants that are identified in jails and through task force operations are being identified and deported.’’
Those task force operations are no longer going to be part of the agreements. A General Accountability Office report and immigration advocates have said that some law enforcement officials have been guilty of racial profiling and overstepping their authority under these 287 G pacts.
Napolitano had suspended the 287g program, requiring all the law enforcement agencies with agreements to renegotiate them. Before it was halted there were 66 agencies all across the country taking part.
DHS decided to tighten up the program, both in terms of looking out for people’s civil rights and making sure that only people who committed “serious” crimes are screened.
In recent weeks the DHS move set up a confrontation with Mariposa Sheriff Joe Arpaio who is famous for conducting sweeps in his communities, rounding up people who are in the country illegally.
ICE officials have told Arpaio to stop the sweeps but he has vowed to continue doing them.
Discuss this article in our Discussion Groups and meet CITIZEN ACTIVISTS!
|
|
| |
| Article Rating | Average Score: 5
Votes: 6
| |
|
Contribute/Join
