Database sending more illegal immigrants back home
Published: Thursday, June 14, 2007
Database sending more illegal immigrants back home
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Hugo Vinicio Hernandez knew that immigration agents could detain him at any time for having disregarded a deportation order in 2001. But the Guatemalan didn't think he would wind up in the custody of immigration agents as a result of a routine traffic stop.
He was deported after being pulled over by a police officer in January.
It's a fate that a growing number of illegal immigrants are facing as federal officials add hundreds of thousands of names of people with outstanding deportation orders into the FBI-run National Crime Information Center database, which police officers use to search for warrants.
In suburban Montgomery County, Md., where Hernandez was stopped, officers have taken about 60 people into custody on immigration warrants since last year. Now relatively low, the numbers are expected to increase regionally and nationally as more records are uploaded, which concerns immigrant advocates and some local police officials.
Supporters of the effort say that enlisting the help of police officers to identify and remove the roughly 600,000 immigrants who are thought to have outstanding deportation orders is long overdue.
Since the government began adding immigration warrants to the database in 2002, authorities have identified more than 25,000 fugitives, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The database "is an effective force multiplier that leverages the resources of law enforcement officers throughout the United States who, in the course of their daily duties, encounter criminal and fugitive aliens wanted by" the agency, said Michael Keegan, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman.
Montgomery police Chief Thomas Manger and other area police chiefs have concluded that they are duty-bound to enforce all National Crime Information Center warrants, even at the expense of being perceived as an extension of the immigration bureaucracy.
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Department of Justice issued an opinion concluding that local law enforcement agencies have broad authority to enforce immigration laws, a departure from Justice opinions drafted in 1996 and 1989 that laid out a narrower role for police officers in enforcing immigration laws. The new opinion coincided with the inclusion of absconders' files in the database.
http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/07/06/ ... mig001.cfm
