Elgin asks for U.S. help
Illegal immigrants who commit felonies target of program
By Ray Quintanilla and Vanessa Bauzá

Tribune staff reporters

11:06 PM CST, December 19, 2007

Elgin will soon join Carpentersville and Waukegan in seeking federal help to deal with illegal immigrants, but city officials said they are not sure they want to participate in a controversial program that allows local police to begin deportation proceedings.

City officials said they will ask U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, for help in removing illegal immigrants who are involved in Elgin street gang activities, assaults, rape and other felonies.

"We are not constitutionally charged with enforcing immigration policy, but through our normal law-enforcement activities when we find persons who have committed serious crimes who are here illegally, we want the cooperation of ICE in making sure those people are permanently removed," Elgin Mayor Ed Schock said.

Elgin police have partnered with ICE on law-enforcement operations in the past, Schock said, and the cooperation has led to the deportations of 800 illegal immigrants over the last decade.

Reaching out to the federal government for help comes in response to concerns that illegal immigrants are becoming a drain on social services in Elgin, a city of 105,000 residents, a third of them Latino. But increased cooperation with ICE is not meant to persecute lawful immigrants, Schock said.

"We are not targeting Hispanics, we are targeting a category of crime and if the people who commit those crimes are illegal aliens, then we want ICE's help in removing them from our community," Schock said. "The goal is not to go out and say, 'Let's find as many illegal aliens as we can.' "

David Kaptain, a member of Elgin's City Council, said city officials plan to evaluate all of the options offered by ICE, including the federal program that grants local law enforcement power to question suspects about their citizenship and to initiate deportations.

Carpentersville, Waukegan and the Lake County Sheriff's Department have each asked to participate in the controversial program.

Federal officials said they have not acted on any of the requests.

ICE spokeswoman Gail Montenegro said applications for assistance remain under review and that no decisions have been made on any of them.

"There are no communities in Illinois right now that we have agreed to grant these powers [to]," she said.

Waukegan's decision to apply for the program drew thousands of protesters last summer. Latino leaders recently urged the Lake County Sheriff's Department to withdraw its application, saying it could lead to racial profiling and discourage Latino residents from reporting crimes in their communities.

Given that polls rank illegal immigration among the top issues of concern in the presidential race, it is not surprising some cities are trying to tighten enforcement, said Fred Tsao, policy director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Chicago.

"It seems like the Department of Homeland Security is more actively promoting these policies," Tsao said.

"Certainly the current political environment is such that communities that do not cooperate with immigration authorities are coming under attack."

Tsao said he has seen no evidence that other local municipalities are following the lead of Chicago, New York City, Houston and Philadelphia, which have declared themselves "sanctuary cities," directing municipal employees to refrain from asking about the immigration status of people in most cases.

Cook County has also been declared a sanctuary area.

Concern about illegal immigrants has been brewing for more than a year, Elgin officials said, but the issue drew attention recently when resident David White asked the City Council to examine whether illegal immigrants are a financial burden to the city.

Elgin "does not follow the law on immigration," said White. "This city knows there are illegals living here and illegals working as city subcontractors," he said.

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