Thread: Law enforcement's immigration inquiries way up nationwide

Law enforcement's immigration inquiries way up
Eagle staff and news services

Local law enforcement agencies in Kansas and across the nation have dramatically stepped up their checks on the immigration status of suspects this past year, statistics show.

Records at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Law Enforcement Support Center in Vermont showed a 20 percent increase in the number of inquiries about immigration status coming from Kansas law enforcement officers for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Kansas officers asked for the status on suspects in 3,315 cases, up from 2,759 immigration checks the prior year, ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said.

Nationwide this year, the center received 728,243 immigration status inquiries -- up 10 percent from the 661,448 it had received a year earlier.

Rusnok attributed the increase to the public and law enforcement being more aware of immigration issues.

"We work cooperatively with law enforcement organizations on a daily basis," he said. "We all have a common goal in mind: to help remove criminal aliens from the street and make communities safer."

The Kansas State Highway Patrol runs an identification check on everybody its troopers stop. And in cases where suspects do not have identification papers, troopers run a check on their immigration status, Trooper Edna Buttler said.

"The response from immigration is slow, and sometimes they don't respond at all.... Most of the time they won't even come and get them," Buttler said.

Unless troopers have at least 10 illegal immigrants in custody at a stop, she said, ICE agents do not respond because their resources are limited.

Rusnok said ICE has to prioritize its operations, and the agency's biggest priority is going after illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

Local fallout

The trend of police working with federal immigration officials has caused some nervousness among Hispanics. In Wichita, it has forced Police Chief Norman Williams to publicly reassure residents the department doesn't enforce immigration laws:

• At a public forum in June, Williams addressed concerns that illegal immigrants would be arrested if they had any contact with Wichita police. "When a citizen is the victim of a crime, we do not ask if they are documented or undocumented," Williams said.

• In August, he appeared on a Spanish-language radio station to explain the department's role in a series of immigration arrests.

He told listeners that police helped federal agents find addresses, but did not conduct the raids. Departmental policy does not allow officers to stop people solely on suspicion of being in the country illegally, he said.

The policy states: "A law enforcement officer in Kansas does not have the power of arrest for a violation of federal immigration laws."

Arturo Ponce, a former meatpacking plant worker who helped found Hispanos Unidos of Liberal, said Hispanic leaders are urging undocumented workers to not drive and to take rides to their jobs while doing everything possible to avoid being detained by police.

"It is rather a dark time for immigrants in the United States," said the Rev. John Fahey Guerra, the priest at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Liberal.

Amid the rising concern, Hispanics in Liberal have been preparing for a possible raid. They've drawn up guardianship papers in case parents are arrested and are planning workshops on what preparations to make in the event of a raid.

Local burden grows

In the meantime, a growing number of local law enforcement agencies across the nation have started shouldering more of the burden of federal immigration enforcement by taking advantage of a cross-training program which certifies them to enforce immigration laws.

The program is authorized under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Since it was instituted in 2002, some 597 officers in 33 local law enforcement agencies across the nation have received the certification, Rusnok said.

These local police and sheriff's deputies -- acting with their new federal immigration enforcement powers -- have made more than 26,000 arrests of undocumented workers for immigration violations.

The program has proven so popular that more than 70 other law enforcement agencies are waiting for the training, ICE officials said.

Most of the local agencies that have already entered such agreements with ICE have been in states with large immigrant populations -- among them California, Arizona, North Carolina and Colorado. No Kansas law enforcement agencies were listed.

The immigration enforcement arrests by the local agencies are done in the normal course of their duties, Rusnok said.

He said many smugglers of illegal immigrants who drive through states like Colorado and Kansas don't have a driver's license, registration or insurance and don't know how to drive in the area, especially during seasonal weather.

"They are not just traffic violations if someone happens to be killed by these people traveling on the roads who don't know the rules," Rusnok said.
http://www.kansas.com/news/story/210763.html

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