Thread: Illegal immigrants

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Illegal immigrants
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
By MATT DUNN
Staff Writer
In the United States, an illegal immigrant goes virtually unnoticed by law enforcement until they get charged with a serious crime.

That's especially evident at the national Law Enforcement Support Center in Williston, Vt., where Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains a database with about 100 million records of known illegal immigrants.

Information on previously deported felons, convicted fugitives and individuals with criminal arrest records are found within that database, which is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week by all levels of law enforcement, according to ICE Spokesman Mike Gilhooly.

"A report will go back to the police if a name matches a record. This would happen the same way as if San Francisco puts a wanted person in the system," he said on Tuesday.

It's getting an individual into the system that remains the difficult part.

ICE investigates large-scale smuggling operations and major businesses which employ illegal immigrants, but sometimes it takes an incident as heinous as the rape of a 13-year-old girl Millville girl which Cumberland County prosecutors charged five men with two weeks ago to get a person into its database.

One of the five men was reported by his attorney to be an illegal immigrant.

"It has to do with the seriousness of the offense," said Freeholder Jim Rocco, a former Vineland Police captain and chief of detectives at the Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office.

Perhaps it is the sheer scope of the issue which makes the enforcement of immigration law difficult.

Although there are no hard statistics on how many illegal immigrants reside in Cumberland County, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services reported there were 7 million living in the U.S. in 2003.

"Locally, we have it bad," Bridgeton Police Chief Jeff Wentz said last week. "Even if we had the authority to enforce federal immigration laws, we would not be able to handle the sheer number of people here."

When law enforcement makes an inquiry about a potential illegal immigrant, it gets forwarded to one of ICE's local offices.

The closest one to Cumberland County is in Cherry Hill.

If a person shows up in their database, Gilhooly said ICE takes action to remove them from the country.

But for every person that turns out to be a known illegal immigrant, just as many do not show up in the database.

Rocco said with a little investigating, it's never difficult to discern if someone's in the country illegally.

"They would have to have proper identification," he said. "A Social Security number. If they don't have that, they're illegal."

Local ICE offices investigate individuals who aren't in their database, but often pick and choose where and when to take action.

Wentz recalled an incident several months ago when police reported to federal authorities two buses parked at the Dollar Super Store on Irving Avenue which may have been transporting illegal immigrants.

All ICE wanted to know is who the buses belonged to, according to the police chief.

Even if local police could be deputized to enforce federal immigration statutes, ICE would still have to come here to remove illegal immigrants.

With 675,000 electronic inquiries a year, it's easy to see how the organization could be overwhelmed.

"Obviously, you can't handle 675,000 phone calls," Gilhooly said.

There's other concerns, particularly in housing illegal immigrants until they can be deported.

Wentz questioned where local and county law enforcement would temporarily hold illegal immigrants if they were permitted to do roundups.

Similar concern was voiced by Rocco.

"If you start cracking down on all the illegal immigrants, there wouldn't be enough holding facilities to detain them," he said.

After you deport them, how do you keep them from coming back?

"I found out at the prosecutor's office that it wasn't cost effective to deport somebody," Rocco said. "You ship them home, they wind up back in California."

It's not just Mexicans that Rocco referred to. He said in the late '80s, he saw similar situations developing with other ethnic groups living in New York City.

As for Mexicans, the federal government won't pay to send most of them back, anymore.

According to Gilhooly, Mexican illegal immigrants can waive their right to an appearance in immigration court and simply return to Mexico on their own dime.

"That's only with a person we take into custody for an immigration violation," he said, not serious offenders.

Maybe it's better that way, according to Rocco and Wentz.

Nearly half the illegal immigrants in this country are from Mexico and Central America.

"People want a better life for themselves," Rocco said. "It's very difficult not to sympathize, but, by the same token, it places a lot of burden on the country's infrastructure, such as hospitals and law enforcement and social services."

Still, illegal immigrants pay sales tax, rent homes and shop.

Wentz said he believes the city's economy would crumble without illegal immigrants.

That's what makes it a tough situation, according to Rocco.

"I think the immigration issue is not just about illegal immigrants," he said. "It has a lot to do with economics."

Wentz said he believes the city's economy would crumble without illegal immigrants.

I would be ashamed to make such an idiotic and embarrassing statement. We are in deep trouble if such a statement is even close to true. Any business or city that has gambled it's success on illegal labor is crazy. They deserve to fail or go out of business because they knew it could all collapse at any time.