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Feds pass up tips on immigrant violators
Roswell's police chief faxes lists of suspected illegal inmates to U.S. officials every day, for the most part a gesture ignored.

By BRIAN FEAGANS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/26/06

A national backlash against illegal immigration has many police chiefs squirming behind their badges. They're the faces of law enforcement in a country that doesn't always enforce immigration laws.
But Roswell Police Chief Edwin Williams has found an unlikely ally to help him feel true to his duty: the fax machine.
At least once a day his jailers fax the names of inmates suspected of being in the country illegally to immigration agents in Atlanta. It's a practice Williams started a decade — and roughly 10,000 names — ago, long before illegal immigration grew into a front-burner issue.
Today, Roswell stands alone in the area covered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) regional office in Atlanta. No other jurisdiction in the Carolinas or Georgia sends such a list, said Kenneth Smith, the office's special agent-in-charge.
The north Fulton city of 100,000 has faxed the booking sheets of 1,396 detainees to ICE in the past nine months alone, according to police department records. Immigration agents have picked up three of them, Williams said, or one out of every 465.
Once, an immigration official called to say the police department was wasting its time with the daily faxes, Williams said. So the jailers quit. When the chief found out, he went ballistic. "I said 'You will continue,' " Williams recalled. "I don't care if they just throw it away. It's my fax paper."
The daily faxes are Williams' way of navigating the widening gap between local expectations and national realities on immigration. A broken federal system may be to blame for the estimated 12 million people living in the United States illegally, but all levels of law enforcement — from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to Main Street, USA — are feeling the heat.
Overwhelmed immigration agents say they only have time to deport the worst of the worst — terrorists, murderers and violent gang members. "It's a simple question of priorities," said ICE's Smith. "If we're using resources to respond to somebody charged with a misdemeanor in Roswell, who are we missing?"
Muddling along
Police departments around the country are filling the void in very different ways. A few cities have banned their officers from even asking about someone's immigration status for fear of a lawsuit. Others have sought federal training to put illegal immigrants into deportation proceedings themselves. Just this week, the Cobb County Sheriff's Department took steps to apply for the training. If accepted, they'll be the first in Georgia. But most departments muddle somewhere in between those extremes, trying to aid immigration authorities without alienating immigrants who can be witnesses to and victims of crimes.
Jeff Turner, assistant chief at the Clayton County Police Department, said reporting every illegal immigrant officers encounter just isn't practicable. But he gives Williams credit for being innovative. "He's covering his butt," Turner said. "Nobody can ever say he's not doing anything about the illegal immigrant problem."
Come July, local authorities will have less leeway in Georgia, which is implementing a new law designed to make the state less hospitable to illegal immigrants. Any foreign national jailed for a felony or driving under the influence must be reported to immigration authorities if they can't show proof of legal U.S. residency. Cobb, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Hall counties are ahead of the pack. ICE agents are based in their jails.
Contacting ICE won't be anything new in Roswell, where police report undocumented immigrants jailed on the most minor of misdemeanors.
That, of course, is the work of Williams, a 53-year-old former naval engineer who grew up in the tiny southwest Georgia town of West Point. The chief's by-the-book style resembles the man whose likeness adorns his office walls: Alabama football legend Paul "Bear" Bryant.
Williams said he's not on some crusade against illegal immigrants. Contrary to popular belief, they don't account for most crime in Roswell, he said. "People don't believe me when I say the biggest group in our jail is white men," he said.
But the chief said it's his duty to report anyone who has broken a federal law, even though he's in local law enforcement. "If I find out you're cheating on your taxes, I'm going to snitch you out, too," he said.
'I'm wrapped up'
Williams began faxing the names of illegal immigrants arrested by his officers to immigration officials shortly after he became chief in 1994.
At that time residents were complaining about the growing number of day laborers waiting for work along Frazier Street. Williams, who had come to Roswell from the chief's position in Americus, was unfamiliar with immigration issues.
He pleaded with what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for help. "I said 'Look, I need you,' " Williams recalled. " 'I'm wrapped up.' "
Williams quickly figured out that the federal agents were wrapped up, too. At this point, many chiefs stop calling. But Williams was just getting started. He decided to document the problem every day — on fax paper.
Now, when someone at a city council meeting demands to know what Roswell is doing about illegal immigration, Williams said he can look the resident in the eye and tell them the truth: He's reported 7,451 people to federal authorities so far this decade.
"Whether [ICE agents] do anything or not with the information is on them," Williams said. "But if I don't do anything, it's my problem."
Williams' just-the-fax-Ma'am response has put him in rare company. He gets praise from both anti-illegal immigrant activists and immigrant advocates in Roswell, a fast-changing suburb where one in five residents is foreign-born. The largest group of newcomers has arrived from Latin America, pushing the city's Hispanic population up from 3 percent in 1990 to 14 percent last year, according to census figures.
"He's just crossing his t's and dotting his i's," said Dan Vargas, immediate past president of the Roswell Intercultural Alliance, which aids day laborers, many of whom are in the country illegally. Vargas said Williams often shows up at the alliance's meetings. And the chief has made the hiring of Latinos and the training of officers to speak Spanish priorities, Vargas said. "We know him to be a friend of the community."
Pressure to do more
D.A. King, who pushes for better enforcement of immigration laws as founder of the Dustin Inman Society, also applauds Williams for doing what most chiefs won't: report illegal immigrants. "I have nothing but praise for this police chief's courage and tenacity," said King, whose group is based in neighboring Marietta.
But King is one of the voices putting pressure on chiefs and sheriffs in Georgia to do more. Tuesday, at a rally in Marietta, he supported Cobb County's vote to join a federal program that trains officers how to enforce immigration laws.
And he's urging other Georgia communities to do the same. Since Mecklenberg County, N.C., joined the federal program earlier this year, the sheriff's department has placed more the 100 people a month into deportation proceedings.
Williams said he's considered signing up, too, but doubts he could get in. So far, the federal program is small and focused on large counties and state patrols. And without additional judges to handle the deportation cases, the chief said he fears the backlog would simply shift to other places — like his 52-bed jail.
Asian, African, European
So for now, Williams said he's comfortable reporting rather than deporting. The chief said his staff hasn't received any special training on how to determine whether someone is in the country illegally.
His jailers ask every inmate if he's a U.S. citizen and then for their Social Security number. Noncitizens have to show proof of legal residency, such as a green card or work visa. Those who can't get their names fed into the Panasonic sitting on the jail's front counter.
Williams said he's coached his officers to treat everyone the same. Increasing complaints about "all the illegal Mexicans" in Roswell don't always wash, he said. "First of all, how do you know they're Mexican?" he said. "And how do you know they're illegal?" The names on his department's daily faxes are Asian, African and European, too, he points out.
Williams likes to tell the story of a tall, blond woman who applied to be a Roswell police officer. She breezed through the initial application process. But in the final stage, during her interview with Williams, the chief noticed the woman hadn't supplied a birth certificate.
She said she was from Sweden and had yet to finalize her naturalization papers. Williams informed the woman she couldn't be a Roswell police officer then.
The chief recalled lecturing the staffers who had let her application through. "They saw this blond, tall, striking woman speaking perfect English," he said.
Williams saw someone whose paperwork wasn't in order.
ROSWELL POLICE ARREST LOG

Year Arrests Reported Picked up
to INS/ICE by INS/ICE
2000 3,343 749 NA
2001 4,018 831 NA
2002 4,899 1,055 NA
2003 4,319 979 NA
2004 4,407 1,232 2
2005 4,838 1,209 7
2006* 4,151 1,396 3
*Through September