Recommendations released on illegal immigration
posted by: Dan Boniface written by: Thanh Truong 7 hrs ago


DENVER - Roughly four months after a deadly accident claimed the life of a young boy and two women, a panel convened at the request of Gov. Bill Ritter released a report and recommendations on ways local authorities can better handle the problem of illegal immigration.

"The bottom line is that we have a number of different layers of law enforcement, federal law enforcement and federal immigration operates in an entirely different plane from local cops on the street," said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety, which drafted the report.

Last September in Aurora, 3-year-old Marten Kudlis died when a truck slammed into an ice cream shop he was in. The two women in the truck, Patricia Guntharp and Debra Serecky, also died.

Police say Francis Hernandez, an illegal immigrant who had previously had numerous encounters with law enforcement, was speeding in a separate car and struck the truck, triggering the accident. The accident sparked public outrage and pushed the divisive illegal immigration debate back into the spotlight.

The 67-page report examined many facets of illegal immigration, specifically the encounters local law enforcers have with potential illegal aliens. There are more than two dozen recommendations in the report including: improving communication channels between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local authorities, making federal fingerprint records to local officials, and increased training of immigration policies and procedures.

With all the recommendations, there remains one major problem. Local authorities can not easily check the immigration status of the people they encounter on a regular basis.

"It's practically impossible for an officer on the street to do that, it can be done, but it takes time, and it requires an unreasonable amount of time, and beat cops don't have three to four hours to hear back if the person they pulled over is legal," Clem said.

"There is no magic button, there's no one place, there's no one computer that we can go to see if a person is here legally or not," said Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates.

The Aurora Police Department was outspoken about its frustrations with the lack of communication between federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement after the accident. Oates supports the recommendations coming out of the working group and says they can help local street officers, deputies and state troopers navigate the complicated web of immigration checks.

That said, Oates recognizes that the local recommendations, statutes or ordinances can only go so far and real reform will have to come from Washington.

"Fundamentally local law enforcement, Colorado law enforcement including at the state level can't solve the immigration for the country until the borders are secured," said Oates.

http://www.9news.com/news/local/article ... &catid=346


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