Illegal-immigration foes want police to change rules
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 4, 2007 12:00 AM

Opponents of illegal immigration have cried for - and won - tougher security at the nation's borders. They have successfully pressed for stepped-up deportations of those in the country illegally.

Now they are setting their sights on controversial police policies that instruct officers in cities nationwide to refrain from reporting non-criminal undocumented immigrants to federal authorities.

Reacting to anti-immigrant public sentiment in many parts of the country, the illegal-immigration foes are championing ballot measures and legislation to overturn the policies.

The policies, which amount to "don't ask" provisions when dealing with undocumented residents who haven't committed crimes other than being in the country illegally, are hailed by police as an effective crime-fighting tool because they encourage illegal immigrants to report crimes without fear of deportation. But anti-illegal-immigration advocates are determined to put an end to them, saying the policies create "sanctuary cities" for illegal immigrants, shield foreign criminals from deportation and hamper federal efforts to combat illegal immigration and terrorism.

Most Valley police agencies have "don't ask" policies in place or support them.

"The policy is you don't do it because we feel (immigration) law does not fall under our authority, but the (immigration foes) are now demanding that we do it," said Ralph Tranter, executive director of the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police. "We are also concerned about being mired in immigration enforcement."

His group and similar ones across the country have issued statements recently in support of the policies.

Immigration foes have introduced a wave of laws and ballot initiatives in Arizona and other states to ban the policies. Some lawmakers and presidential candidates want to withhold anti-terrorism and other federal funding to sanctuary cities in hopes of pressing them to enforce immigration laws, usually the job of the federal government.

"For some, the war on illegal immigrants has taken precedent over the war on terrorism," said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at New York University law school. The institute is a nonpartisan research organization.


Differing views
The pressure on police agencies to abandon their immigration policies and enforce federal laws began mounting after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and has intensified since immigration reform died in Congress. That has left communities and states to grapple with illegal immigration.

The September killing of a Phoenix police officer by an illegal immigrant and other high-profile crimes at the hands of illegal immigrants around the country have added fuel to the already contentious debate.

Police chiefs across the nation, meanwhile, maintain the policies do not shield foreign criminals or interfere with federal immigration enforcement. Instead, they say, the policies represent a sensible approach toward illegal residents who are either crime victims or witnesses by encouraging them to come forward without fear of deportation, which makes communities safer for everyone. The policies also allow local police to focus limited resources on more serious crimes, regardless of immigration status, the chiefs say.

Government statistics suggest that foreign criminals are not getting a free pass. Deportations are daily occurrences in Phoenix and cities across the U.S. In the first eight months of this fiscal year, fugitive deportation operations netted 17,911 illegal immigrants, compared with 1,901 in all of fiscal year 2003, when the government began its crackdown.

More than 70 cities, counties and states have policies that restrict enforcement of federal immigration laws by local authorities, according to a preliminary list compiled by the National Immigration Law Center. Perhaps hundreds more of the policies exist.

Not all involve police - some are limited to city employees - but those are the ones that have drawn the most fire. They have spawned a debate over whether local police have a duty to enforce all laws, even civil immigration laws, and whether failing to do so hinders federal immigration enforcement.

Immigration foes say that there is a duty to enforce laws and that not doing so contributes to the immigration problem. But federal laws prevent local police from enforcing civil immigration laws without first entering a special agreement with the federal government or unless an emergency is declared, said Yale law Professor Michael Wishnie, an expert in immigration and civil-rights law.

"At some level a lot of this is moot," he said.

Policy protocol
The Phoenix Police Department's policy bars officers from stopping people for the sole purpose of determining immigration status. It also bans officers from calling the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency about people who are crime victims or witnesses or people who have committed only minor civil offenses such as driving without a license. Officers are instructed, however, to call ICE when they encounter smuggling activity such as drophouses, where immigrants in transit are held after entering the country illegally.

ICE is also automatically notified whenever illegal immigrants are booked into jail by sheriff's officers.

"There is a misconception about our policy: that we don't do anything about illegal immigrants who commit crimes," Phoenix police Commander Chris Crockett said. "That is not true. If you commit a crime, we arrest you," regardless of immigration status.

ICE officials agree. None of the police polices in Arizona amounts to "sanctuary cities," ICE spokesman Vincent Picard said.

"We recognize that every community is going to craft policies on how they are going to work with us," he said.

Many of the policies, which vary from city to city, are rooted in the community policing movement, said Lynn Tramonte, deputy director for legislative affairs at the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant organization based in Washington.

The movement, which took hold in the 1970s and 1980s, is based on the notion that police can better fight crime by building trust with residents and encouraging them to help identify suspects and report problems.

"They basically say if you've got someone in custody for a crime (who is suspected of being in the country illegally), then by all means contact ICE," Tramonte said. Otherwise, don't ask about immigration status, she said. Some of the policies, however, were created after police departments made mistakes while trying to enforce immigration laws.

The Chandler City Council, for example, adopted a policy in 1999 that limits police from contacting ICE. It came after the city's Police Department teamed up with immigration officials in July 1997 to round up illegal immigrants. Several dozen U.S. citizens and legal residents who apparently were targeted because of their appearance sued, saying their civil rights had been violated. They won a $400,000 settlement from the city.

Tramonte and others say anti-illegal-immigration advocates have wrongly lumped the police policies in with the sanctuary policies adopted by cities in the 1980s. Those policies, which barred the use of local tax dollars to help enforce federal immigration laws, were aimed at protecting Central American refugees fleeing civil war from deportation. Fewer than five actual "sanctuary cities" still exist.

"Technically, none of these (police policies) are sanctuary cities. People have the impression that cities are literally hiding illegal immigrants, and that is not true," said Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute.

Rules under fire
Critics say the police policies are unlawful because they provide refuge to illegal immigrants and interfere with the federal government's efforts to enforce immigration laws, which could help catch foreign-born terrorists. They also say the police policies allow foreign-born criminals to slip through the fingers of local law enforcement.

In September, for example, Erik Jovani Martinez, an illegal immigrant with a long criminal history, killed a Phoenix police officer. Martinez had been arrested in May 2006 by Scottsdale police, then released on bail.

"How many more officers have to be killed because of these policies? Sanctuary policies are illegal," said state Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa.

Pearce and several others are trying to gather more than 200,000 signatures to get a citizens initiative on the Nov. 4, 2008, ballot that would ban the policies in Arizona and require local police to enforce federal immigration laws.

Lawmakers in Virginia, Tennessee, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Texas have introduced similar laws aimed at banning the policies or asking local police to cooperate with federal authorities.

In Congress, some Republicans in the House and Senate also have introduced legislation to withhold anti-terrorism and other forms of federal funding to cities with sanctuary policies.

None has passed.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, said sanctuary cities, like other local immigration policies, are consequences of the federal government's continuing inability to fix the border problem.

"I don't approve of them, but that's what happens when the federal government fails us in its federal responsibility," McCain said. "It's just like the border. If we don't carry out our responsibilities, then you get Minutemen down on the border or somebody else. We failed. And no wonder they don't trust us. No wonder they don't have any confidence in that."

The issue is heating up in the presidential campaign.

Republican hopeful Fred Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, is promising to end the practice by cutting off some federal funds to any community that doesn't report illegal immigrants.

And former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been attacking national Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani for supporting New York City's policy while mayor.

Giuliani says the policy was misrepresented. It required police to report illegal immigrants who committed crimes while encouraging crime victims to report crimes without fear, he says.

"I said - and I think this is a sensible policy - if you are an illegal immigrant in New York City and a crime is committed against you, I want you to report that, because lo and behold, the next time a crime is committed, it could be against a citizen or a legal immigrant," Giuliani said in a Sept. 5 Republican debate.

As a result, Giuliani said, the policy helped convert New York from the nation's crime capital into the nation's safest large city.
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