Posted March 6, 2007


Sheriff's department may join immigration crackdown

By Paul Brinkmann
pbrinkma@greenbaypressgazette.com

The Brown County Sheriff’s Department is among the first law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin to consider training its deputies to crack down on illegal immigrants.


County leaders are only exploring the issue so far. Sheriff Dennis Kocken has requested application materials for the “287g program” with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.

Currently, the program includes only 10 departments and 214 officers nationwide, said Michel Gilhooly, division spokesman.

“We have more and more inquiries every day,” Gilhooly said in a recent phone interview. “We have 47 departments in various stages of applying … but I don’t see that any other Wisconsin agencies have formally applied.”

The county’s Public Safety Committee is set to discuss the issue in a meeting at 5 p.m. Wednesday in Room 200 of the Northern Building, 305 E. Walnut St. in downtown Green Bay.

Some members of the local Hispanic community remain opposed to the idea, and plan to attend the meeting tonight, said Chico Ramirez, Latino liaison for the Multicultural Center of Greater Green Bay.

“The overall sentiment of the people here is, we don’t think that’s a good idea, at all,” Ramirez said. “Any kind of trust that the police have built with Hispanic people is all destroyed. You won’t get the same cooperation when you go into the Hispanic communities to talk to the people.”

The biggest concern is that local police might intentionally or inadvertently engage in racial profiling — which means stopping people who simply look Hispanic or not native to the area. But Kocken has said he expects the federal training program would help prevent that.

The 287g program has two levels of training — one for identifying illegal immigrants among jail inmates, and one for investigating illegal immigration in the community.

The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office in Charlotte, N.C., started the jail program in May. As of Feb. 13, the department identified 2,688 people in its jail not born in the United States. Of that number, 1,400 were found to be illegal. The department either placed a detainer on them for pickup by immigration officers or set a docket date with the federal immigration court in Atlanta.

“We’ve been real pleased with our program here,” said Julie Rush, director of communications.



http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/app ... 06/GPGnews