Montgomery County is no longer a haven for immigrants and their advocates.
By Christine MacDonald
Posted: February 18, 2009

By many accounts, Lila Meizell was a nice lady who died a horrific death. The 83-year-old Wheaton resident was beaten and then burned alive in her home last year, a casualty of an alleged check-cashing scheme that went bad.

Despite the lurid headlines and public consternation, her murder might have been quickly forgotten, stored away in memory like so many other grisly crimes. But the three people in custody are all Salvadoran immigrants, including a man who had done yardwork for Meizell. So her death has become a new front in the political battle over illegal immigrants in Montgomery County.

Until Meizell’s murder and a series of other area homicides police say were committed by Hispanic immigrants, Montgomery County officials had clung to a sort of don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy when dealing with foreign-born residents; they left immigration enforcement to the feds.

All that changed last week, when the Montgomery County Police Department joined a growing number of law enforcement agencies in the D.C. metropolitan area that have stepped up scrutiny of immigrants. These days if you get arrested for handgun possession or a violent crime in Montgomery County, police will forward your name to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to find out if you are deportable.

The policy reversal is a blow to CASA of Maryland, one of the most influential immigrant advocacy organizations in the country. CASA Executive Director Gustavo Torres and other immigrant allies vigorously lobbied county officials against wading into immigration issues, warning that such a move could violate the Constitution and set police on a slippery slope toward racial profiling. They also raised the specter of civil rights lawsuits like the one CASA and the American Civil Liberties Union initiated against the Frederick County Sheriff’s Department.

But with the economy tanking and crime and anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise, Montgomery County Executive Isiah “Ikeâ€