Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan (left in black) with Henderson County Sheriff Rick Davis at a news conference in November 2007 (Photo courtesy Hendersonville Times-News)
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ASHEVILLE.--Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan has questioned the appropriateness of federal immigration authorities using local sheriff's deputies to apprehend undocumented immigrants, to whom Duncan thinks North Carolina should return some limited driving privileges primarily as a means of credibly identifying them and reducing the number of uninsured motorists.
"I am aware of the statistics that show that a lot of the people who are taken into the 287(g) program are done so because of non-alcohol related motor vehcile or traffic offenses," Duncan said about the initiative known for where its authorizing language is found in federal code.

"It is not a perfect program. One of the things that is hard to explain away is that for otherwise law-abiding citizens, other than the fact that they are here undocumented, what IDs them is a minor violation or even driving to work, having to drive with no operators license."

Duncan said now that his department has access to a database that cross-references the fingerprints of undocumented immigrants with those of suspects wanted for state and federal offenses, "we would have to rethink 287(g) because of the additional cost of housing them for us. For us, once we were able to get interoperability, 287(g) did not seem a good fit for Buncombe County."

Duncan offered to La Voz Independiente to interview him
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