Ga. immigration law breeds fear, mistrust
By Jenny Jarvie, Los Angeles Times | July 30, 2007

ATLANTA -- When Emelina Ramirez's roommates attacked her, punching and kicking her in the stomach, she called the police for help. The police handcuffed her, took her to jail, and ran her fingerprints through a federal database. She is now in an Alabama cell awaiting deportation.

In the last month, Ramirez's story has spread beyond the Hispanic community in Carrollton, the small rural town west of Atlanta where she lived, and across Georgia, which has just enacted one of the nation's harshest laws against illegal immigration. It is a story that, for many undocumented immigrants, has one moral: Do not trust the police.

"People are living in fear," said Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, which is attempting to educate Hispanic residents on the state's new law. That is difficult, he said, because of the vast difference in how local enforcement officials interpret the law. The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, which took effect July 1, requires law enforcement officers to investigate the citizenship status of anyone jailed for a felony crime or driving under the influence. It also directs Georgia's Department of Public Safety to select and train state patrol officers to enforce federal immigration law while carrying out regular duties.

Across the state, however, Hispanic advocates complain that local officials are increasingly running background checks on Hispanics who commit misdemeanor crimes, such as minor traffic violations, or even those who report crimes, such as stolen laptops or fraud.

At the same time, criminals are targeting undocumented immigrants, aware that they tend to have large amounts of cash and are wary of reporting crimes to officials. "It's the Wild West out here," said Rich Pellegrino, director of the Cobb Cherokee Immigrant Alliance, which has been working with the police department's crime prevention unit in Cobb County, a suburban county northeast of Carrollton, to persuade undocumented immigrants to report crimes and serve as witnesses after a string of home invasions targeting Hispanics in trailer parks this year.

This month, Pellegrino said, patrol officers checked the immigration status of a woman driving with a suspended tag. She is now awaiting deportation.

"We spent months building up trust," he said, "and now we've got to start all over again."

For Georgia Senator Chip Rogers, a Republican who sponsored the state's immigration law, there is no problem with local law enforcement's interpretation of state immigration laws. The Ramirez case, he said, did not apply to the law he sponsored, because Ramirez had not been jailed for a felony or DUI. But if Ramirez was here illegally, he insisted, it was local law enforcement officials' "duty and responsibility" to report her to federal officials.

"All my law does," he said, "is require local officials to enforce federal immigration law."

Yet some legal analysts highlight the complexity of such federal immigration laws and question whether local police officers and sheriffs can enforce them without racial profiling and discrimination. "The fear is that if you put it in the discretion of local law enforcement you will have situations where they go outside of the law," said Cristina Rodriguez, associate professor of law at New York University.

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