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Suffolk Plans a Crackdown on Laborers There Illegally

By COREY KILGANNON
Published: March 1, 2007
HAUPPAUGE, N.Y., Feb. 28 — Warning that the proliferation of illegal immigrants is threatening the basic harmony and quality of life in the suburbs of Long Island, the Suffolk County executive, Steve Levy, outlined a list of initiatives on Wednesday to limit the influx, including a crackdown on day laborers and contractors and the assignment of federal immigration officials to the county jail.

Flanked by other politicians and law enforcement officials, Mr. Levy charged that illegal immigrants were hurting the county’s economy by driving down wages “that would otherwise be paid to legal residents, immigrants or not.”

Illegal immigrants, he said, are driving up costs for schools, hospitals, jails, courts and the police, and Suffolk taxpayers are “unnecessarily footing the bill.”

News of the initiatives brought an immediate outcry from immigrant advocacy groups and Hispanic leaders, who have said that Mr. Levy’s stance smacks of bigotry.

With the illegal immigration issue increasingly playing out in suburban settings, Mr. Levy, a co-founder of a national coalition called Mayors and Executives for Immigration Reform, has attracted a national spotlight because of his hard-line stance on the subject. He insists that the federal government has failed to address the problems of illegal immigration or to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants, and that local governments must take up the slack.

Mr. Levy said that after two years of discussion, he had persuaded federal immigration officials to assign four enforcement officers to work full time in the county jail system to deal with inmates who are in the United States illegally.

He said that anti-loitering legislation to prohibit traffic obstruction would help clear day laborers off the roadsides and street corners.

In addition, he said there would be a seminar on March 14 at which county officials would explain to business owners a county law enacted in October that requires companies contracting with Suffolk County to verify that their employees are in the country legally, a move that he said would affect more than 6,000 companies and agencies.

He said the policy of having county police officers look into the legal residency of anyone arrested and having them check the names against a federal database of illegal immigrants resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of illegal immigrants turned over for deportation.

The aim of all these measures, he said, is to protect residents who “do not want to see their neighborhood turned upside down.”

He estimated that of the 1.5 million people living in the county, 40,000 were illegal immigrants.

Saying that federal immigration policy failed to address illegal immigration, he added, “We’re trying to chip away at the problem” by creating local legislation.

“There’s frustration on the local level regarding our nation’s broken borders,” Mr. Levy said, calling the county initiatives an attempt to “blaze the trail” against widespread immigration problems.

Jack Eddington, a Democratic county legislator and a co-sponsor of the anti-loitering legislation, told reporters that the problems of rising taxes and illegal immigration were “two sides of the same coin,” and warned illegal immigrants, “You better beware.”

“If you’re here in Suffolk County illegally, you will not stay here,” Mr. Eddington said. “If you are on the street looking for work and causing unsafe conditions, you will not stay. Suffolk County residents will not be victimized anymore.”

Another co-sponsor, Joseph T. Caracappa, Republican of Selden, said that taxpayers had “had enough” and that people had begun to move out of the county.

“Go down your block and see all the For Sale signs,” he said.

Mr. Levy said that in 2004, the police informed federal authorities about 44 people who seemed to lack legal residency. In 2005, the number increased to 1,063. In 2006, it rose to 2,287.

Sheriff Vincent DeMarco outlined the county’s new Criminal Alien Program, which would give federal immigration officials “access to our jail management system.”

He said that roughly 10 percent of the 1,764 inmates in the county jail system seemed to be in the country illegally. Most of them are supposed to be turned over to federal authorities, he said, but in the meantime must be kept in county jails, costing the county $200 a day for each one.

“We want them out of county jails and into federal prisons ASAP,” he said.

The sheriff said that when people were arrested who could not show any legal residency status, “the majority of them admit how they got in, believe it or not.”

Currently, federal immigration authorities must visit the jail to interview and pick up immigrants, but often the lag in waiting times allows some inmates to be bailed out or “slip through the cracks,” Mr. Levy said. Having officials assigned to the jail would make the process more efficient, he said.

Mr. Levy has been accused by Latino leaders and immigrant advocates of failing to reach out to Spanish-speaking communities and of fostering racism against Latinos. They say that such attitudes led to the 2000 case in which two white men lured two Mexican day laborers to an abandoned warehouse with a promise of work and then beat them.

The Latino leaders called the anti-loitering law an attempt to criminalize “standing while Latino.”

“He’s attacking a community for political gain,” said Nadia Marin-Molina, executive director of the Workplace Project, a Latino advocacy group with offices in Hempstead and Farmingville. “He’s making sure the public remembers that he is anti-immigrant. He’s playing to anti-immigrant sentiment for political gain, just to get additional votes. Suffolk County has low wages and a high cost of living, and he’s telling them to blame the immigrants.”

“We’ve tried to meet with him, but he’s refused,” Ms. Marin-Molina said. “He won’t work with us and won’t do anything to address the real issues. He’ll only attack us.”