Police pass on role in roundup of illegal aliens
By Joe Johnson | joe.johnson@onlineathens.com | Story updated at 11:52 PM on Friday, June 27, 2008
Roberto's brother and cousin were swept up by immigration officials in Athens earlier this month and are awaiting deportation hearings.

That didn't stop the Mexican immigrant from calling police early the morning of June 20, when he spotted a man breaking into his car outside his home on Vincent Drive.

"I have no problem calling the police," the 35-year-old maintenance worker said. "Most of the police in Athens are good to the Spanish people."

And the police want to keep it that way.

That's why they declined to participate in the sweep by U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents, according to Athens-Clarke Assistant police Chief Alan Brown.

"We have to work with immigrants, especially the good guys, because they are a part of the community," Brown said. "If we work in conjunction with (ICE), we'll be perceived as the guys who send them back to Mexico, then we won't get their help."

Immigrants, both legal and illegal, are an entrenched part of Athens-Clarke County. The 2000 U.S. Census says 6.3 percent of the county's population is Hispanic, but demographers more than double that number because illegal immigrants don't have valid driver's licenses or voter registration cards, the two main sources used for census counts.

"Immigrants are here and not going back, and we have to work with them," Brown said. "We try to surgically remove the bad guys from their community and not be perceived as attacking and harassing the good folks."

Local police did that June 12, when they searched a home on North Bluff Road, where people were allegedly trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine.

ICE agents participated in the search, but only at the request of Athens-Clarke police because investigators learned that fraudulent identity documents were in the home, officials said. The agents plan to initiate deportation proceedings against the four men and one woman who were arrested, all illegal immigrants from Mexico.

In the bigger ICE dragnet this month, part of the agency's Operation Community Shield, agents arrested seven Athens residents - all illegal immigrants and purported gang members who now face deportation, according to ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas.

The sweep netted 122 gang members in the Atlanta metro area, Dalton, Savannah and Albany, Navas said.

Athens-Clarke police don't want to be involved in that type of operation because they intimidate otherwise law-abiding immigrants, according to Brown.

"We'd like to get the gang members and criminals, but when you do that, you knock on a lot of doors and scare a lot of people," Brown said. "Sometimes, ICE comes in and the next day half the poultry plant doesn't come to work because they are terrified."

Roberto said about 10 ICE agents in a van and several other vehicles swooped into his neighborhood and the Garnett Ridge community nearby the night his relatives were arrested.

"I don't exactly know where they are right now," he said.

Agents arrested Roberto's brother because he had gang-related tattoos, he said, and took his cousin because he wouldn't tell agents where his own brother was.

ICE, an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is trying to rid the country of serious criminals - from gang members to drug dealers and arms traffickers - through "targeted enforcement operations based on intelligence and investigative leads," said Barbara Gonzalez, ICE's southern regional communication director.

Not all law officers think ICE will chill their relationship between immigrants and local police.

Gainesville police have been working with immigration officials since the early 1990s, according to Detective Joe Amerling, who called ICE "an incredible tool."

Illegal immigrants report crimes and help with investigations even though local police work closely with ICE, which has two agents permanently assigned to Gainesville, Amerling said.

"We don't go knocking on doors and yanking people out of the house," Amerling said. "The only time we encounter illegal aliens is when they are in violation of the law."

Amerling and other members of his unit - the Gainesville-Hall County Gang Task Force - often meet with Latino groups to foster trust.

"We tell them, 'We don't care if you are illegal, and if you are a victim of a crime we don't come to your house and say let us see your papers,' " he said.

Interagency cooperation has removed many dangerous criminals from the street, including the 8,000 gang members arrested since the inception of Operation Community Shield in 2005, according to Kenneth Smith, special agent in charge of ICE's Office of Investigations in Atlanta.

"These criminals seek to terrorize our communities through their violent acts against the innocent," Smith said. "These recent arrests should send the message to gang members that the law enforcement community in Georgia is united and in full force."

But agents will also arrest people in neighborhoods and at workplaces if they learn illegal immigrants are there, Gonzalez said.

"We prioritize our cases based on national security and public safety, but if someone is in the country illegally and has not been convicted of another crime, that does not mean that they are immune to the application of immigration law," she said. "Out ICE agents cannot turn a blind eye to violations of the law."

Many local law enforcement agencies routinely partner with ICE, but immigration officials respect that Athens-Clarke police have their own policies and procedures, Gonzalez said.

"The overarching message for the community there is ICE agents and officers are working tirelessly to ensure that the law-abiding citizens are safe," she said.



Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 062808


Click here to return to story:
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/062 ... 8037.shtml