Thread: ICE to train Maricopa deputies to enforce immigration law

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=6145702

ICE to train Maricopa deputies to enforce immigration law

Feb 26, 2007
PHOENIX -- Federal immigration officials and the Maricopa County Sheriff's office signed an agreement Monday to allow trained deputies to enforce immigration laws.


Under the agreement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will begin training 160 Maricopa County deputies Tuesday to be authorized to detain and arrest suspected illegal immigrants both in the county jail and on the streets.

Deputies will go through a four-week course to learn about nationality and immigration laws in depth. The trained officers will have authority to determine whether someone is an illegal immigrant and will be able to designate that immigration removal proceedings begin.

The action is permitted under federal immigration law.

"It's the largest agreement of its kind," said ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack.

The agreement that Sheriff Joe Arpaio signed makes Maricopa County's participation the largest one-time addition in the effort.

Arpaio said the agreement means his office will gain a new tool from the federal government to help combat the problems of illegal immigration.

He has sought to empower his officers to enforce immigration violations for some time.

Since 2002, a total of 188 police and corrections officers from eight agencies across the country have been granted that authority, and more than 40 other agencies are seeking similar training for their officers to be able to make immigration arrests and hasten deportations.

Opponents and critics have said that immigration enforcement by local law officers could undermine the trust built up toward police officers in immigrant communities and also could result in racial profiling _ and civil rights violations.

Mack said immigration-trained detention officers inside the county jail will be "a very good fit" by having those deputies interview criminals on their immigration status and being able to keep some who are here illegally from being released.

"They'll be helping us identify illegal criminals who are incarcerated so that they don't get released into the street but get put into deportation proceedings," Mack said.

An ICE supervisor will review the case of any person identified by a deputy or corrections officer as illegally in this country and deportable and would be the one to sign a deportation notice, according to Mack.

Each person also will continue to have due process in the immigration courts, she said.

Some of Arpaio's trained deputies will be used outside the jail, working with ICE on criminal investigations targeting illegal immigrants in gang activities and immigrant smuggling, she said.

Alonzo Pena, ICE special agent in charge in Phoenix, said the agreement and the "unprecedented cooperation" that he believes will result, will enhance the ability "to combat the violence and crime that go hand-in-hand with illegal immigration."

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