San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial

The right balance

How deputies confront illegal immigration
2:00 a.m. July 31, 2009

San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore is walking a fine line when it comes to enforcing immigration law. On the one hand, the former special agent in charge of the San Diego office of the FBI wants to offer a helping hand to federal officials by alerting them to the presence of suspected illegal immigrants. But, at the same time, Gore wants to preserve the trust that his department has built over time with immigrant communities.

Gore recently sat down with the Union-Tribune editorial board to sort all of this out. He stressed that, if a sheriff's deputy happens to encounter someone who he has reason to believe “could be in the country illegally,â€