Cops Enforcing Immigration Laws Bust County Budgets

New America Media, News Report, Anthony D. Advincula, Posted: Aug 13, 2008

When local cops enforce federal immigration laws, the police department may not only incur significant costs, but may also fail to attend to more serious crimes and delay response times to most emergency calls, according to a report released by the Immigration Policy Center (IPC).

Take the case of Maricopa County, Ariz. Since Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio transformed his department into an immigration-enforcement agency, following a partnership made by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on January 19, 2007, his office has incurred a $1.3 million deficit in just three months.

Maricopa’s police officers began working 4,500 extra hours every two-week pay period during the first month of the partnership, as compared to 2,900 extra hours the previous month, the report said. In April 2007, police officers worked more than 9,000 overtime hours and cost the county’s taxpayers $373,757.

Maricopa County is not an isolated case. More and more cities across the country that allow the police to carry out federal immigration laws get themselves in a similar economic quagmire. Many of them find that it is much more expensive than they thought.

Recently, the initiative against illegal immigration in Prince William County, Va., raised its costs to $6.9 million for the budget year that starts July 1, because of overcrowding at the county jail.

Immigrant rights advocates also say that even cities like Valley Park, Mo. and Hazleton, Pa.—where local enforcement takes a more aggressive approach than simply relying on ICE to perform federal immigration operations—may fall into deep budget pits soon. “This kind of local enforcement just leaves counties broke, aside from many other negative consequences,â€