Thread: Maricopa County prosecutor to reveal immigration plan

Maricopa Co. prosecutor to reveal immigration plan

May 19, 2010 3:00 am

Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley plans to outline his plan for confronting illegal immigration on Wednesday morning.

Romley has been developing the new plan since shortly after being named to the post by the county board of supervisors in mid-April. He replaced Andrew Thomas, who made immigration enforcement a priority but resigned to run for attorney general.

Romley's office has said he was working with police agencies and other prosecutors to develop the plan.

http://azstarnet.com/news/state-and-reg ... ff8d9.html

A bus to Mexico - that's MY immigration plan.

Originally Posted by ReggieMay

A bus to Mexico - that's MY immigration plan.

That would be nice but they can only turn them over to I.C.E. because federal law prohibits any city, county or state law enforcement officer or agency from deporting anyone. Only the federal government can deport people.

I guess you could put them in a bus and drive down by the border crossing and tell them that anyone who wanted to go to Mexico was free to do so, and anyone who stays on the bus goes back to the county jail.

How about the Border Patrol ? Put them on buses and hand them over to the BP's.

Originally Posted by USPatriot

How about the Border Patrol ? Put them on buses and hand them over to the BP's. :)

I have never heard of the Border Patrol accepting illegal aliens from any jail or prison. That is an ICE responsibility.
I don't know that there is any law that prohibits it, but it may be a Border Patrol policy or rule.

Romley reveals immigration plan
14 commentsby Michael Kiefer - May. 19, 2010 10:46 AM
The Arizona Republic
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Interim Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley will no longer charge illegal immigrants as co-conspirators to human smuggling, and his immigration plan does not include raiding businesses to make cases under Arizona's employer-sanctions law, he disclosed today.

Instead, as Romley has hinted for weeks, he intends to focus on the cartels and criminal syndicates that smuggle humans, guns and drugs into Arizona.

Romley formally unveiled his plans at a Wednesday news conference.

Romley intends to unify law enforcement and prosecutors in Arizona and the three other states that border Mexico to share intelligence, pool resources and come up with standardized approaches to immigration-related crime.

Even before Romley made his announcement, however, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas, who resigned to run for Arizona Attorney General, called a news conference to blast Romley about what they felt were setbacks in the immigration fight. Arpaio and Thomas have staked their political careers on immigration.

Romley recently balked at charging 32 illegal immigrants the sheriff wanted to prosecute for conspiracy to commit human smuggling. Romley wanted the Sheriff's Office to produce documentation that the people were in the country illegally. Romley turned the immigrants over to federal immigration authorities for voluntary deportation rather than charge them under state statutes.

Romley acknowledged that the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the practice of charging immigrants with conspiracy, but noted that Thomas was the only county attorney in the state to make such charges.

Romley told The Arizona Republic that those immigration "strategies" were less successful than they were touted to be.

"In four years, from March 2006 through March 2010, there was a total of about 1,300 cases processed by the office," Romley said. "Truthfully, that is not much of an impact in the office when you consider that the office receives 70,000 felonies every year. It really isn't that much."

In a press conference Tuesday, however, Thomas put the number of prosecutions closer to 1,500.

Romley went further, however, saying that an immigration policy that focused on neighborhood crime sweeps where people were pulled over for cracked windshields as probable cause to check their immigration status, in fact, created a diversion that allowed organized crime to flourish.

"The intelligence is beginning to indicate that, because of the vacuum created by not putting a strong focus on the major criminal syndicates and cartels, they are strengthening their base by recruiting members in the United States," he said.

"They're taking advantage of these crime sweeps."

Among the other changes Romley intends to implement: A focus on clearing outstanding felony arrest warrants, which he estimated at 38,000. Collaboration with other prosecutors and law enforcement agencies in the four-state border region to pool intelligence.

A standardized law-enforcement approach to Senate Bill 1070, which created Arizona's new immigration law, to try to ward off lawsuits and allegations of racial profiling. He noted, "If someone comes in and raises all heck that you're not enforcing the law and wants to sue you, you're harder to sue, because every police agency in the state has agreed that this is the approach that we ought to be taking."

An approach to the employer-sanctions law that de-emphasizes policing businesses, and asks them to regulate themselves with an office policy intended to educate and certify businesses on hiring practices.

That stands in contrast to previous policies under which Thomas and Arpaio staged raids on businesses to charge employees with identity theft, and then tried to build employer-sanction cases out of evidence gathered by search warrant.

Romley admitted that Arpaio can still stage such raids – in fact, sheriff's deputies raided a business Wednesday morning – but the decision to pursue employer sanctions rests with the County Attorney's Office, Romley said.

Although Romley voiced his opposition to SB 1070 before it was signed into law, he now says it will be part of his immigration strategy.

Romley believes that Thomas' policy of charging conspiracy against those smuggled into the state is no longer necessary because SB 1070 and House Bill 2162, which fine-tuned the law, make it illegal to be in Arizona without proper documents.

"There's a principle that prosecutors go by," he said. "If a crime fits within the four corners of a statute, that's the one you go for. The new 1070 legislation creates a new crime for not being here legally – properly. That's going to be the crime that we charge."

The conspiracy charge, however, was a class 4 felony, which allowed law enforcement to hold suspects without bond. The new crime is a class 1 misdemeanor, and judges will have to make bond available, perhaps creating problems in getting suspects to court.

Romley's interim term as county attorney runs until the results are final in the November special election for the post.

The more important election, perhaps, will be the August Republican primary, where Romley is up against conservative Bill Montgomery and Chandler Mayor Boyd Dunn. As yet, there are no Democratic candidates vying for the office.

When asked if he thinks his immigration strategy can get him elected in the current political climate, Romley responded, "I'm hoping I can educate the public. I'm hoping my sincerity comes through. If not, so be it."

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/ ... z0oOtqiduW

This is why Andrew Thomas should have been grateful that he WAS Maricopa County Atty. and not had such a big ego that he's running for State Atty General. He was more effective as Maricopa Co. Atty. Now all the plans he put in place are being thrown out by his successor.

He's not going to win his election for State Atty General because he's a fruitcake and should have been grateful for the power he had...