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Cops getting squeeze from both sides on immigration
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.11.2007

The declaration in the past week by Tucson police that they no longer would call immigration officials to schools and churches put one controversy to rest.
But it left a plethora of questions about a policy that gives broad discretion to officers in dealing with illegal entrants.
Dueling protests were held last week, showing the lingering dissatisfaction on both sides of the immigration debate about such a policy.
The first involved about 100 students upset that police called immigration officials to Catalina High School when a student was in custody for having marijuana, resulting in the deportation of the teen and his family. Then, on Friday, about 100 people who said the police did the right thing at Catalina and shouldn't bow down to the school district marched across Downtown to make their point.
The policy prohibits officers from stopping people merely on the suspicion they are in the country illegally, but gives them liberty to make "case-by-case" decisions about when to call immigration authorities.
People who advocate stiffer immigration enforcement contend the policy should be to always enforce immigration law, even at churches and schools.
"It's too lax," said Pat Sexton of Tucson, who protested Friday. "They should be required to call. We've got to enforce the laws. I'm sorry, but they have already broken the law by coming here illegally."
Immigrant and civil rights groups, however, say the policy provides too much leeway. It gives individual officers ample opportunity to turn in illegal immigrants over minor offenses, they said, and raises distrust of the police within that community.
"It sounds very shady to me," said Anna Ochoa O'Leary, an adjunct lecturer in the Mexican-American Studies and Research Center at the University of Arizona. "It sounds like an open season on people who might look like immigrants."
Police commanders said the policy is understood by officers and being carried out as it has always been.
Any policy that grants officers discretion with little or no guidelines can be problematic, especially in a political climate that has turned against illegal entrants in recent years, said Raymond Michalowski, an Arizona Regents Professor in the department of criminology at Northern Arizona University. Officers reflect the society they live in, he said.
"Whenever you have a policy that allows for discretion, people will use the discretion in many different ways," Michalowski said. "The use of that discretion will reflect their own personal and professional standpoints."
Political climate
Observers say the political climate around illegal immigration has altered the way local police departments handle their interactions with people here without proper documentation.
"The conservative movement to hyper-criminalize migrants has put a great deal of police departments under pressure to be proactive in enforcing laws," Michalowski said.
Most police chiefs in large cities such as Tucson remain set against enforcing immigration law despite the pressure, but it is standard to have policies that allow officers to call immigration authorities at their discretion, he said.
That has given officers who oppose illegal immigration a license to do what they have always wanted to do, and encouraged officers who stand in the middle ground politically on the issue to get involved, he said. Whereas a decade ago a police officer might have felt he shouldn't ask about somebody's immigration status, today he would be rewarded for asking that question, Micha-lowski said.
"Today, you'll get a lot of actual, or metaphorical, support from a segment of society that thinks this is what police should be doing," he said.
That opinion was on display Friday when nearly 100 people gathered in front of Tucson Police Department headquarters to protest the department's announcement that it would no longer call immigration officials to schools or churches. The march was organized by a local talk-radio station, 104.1 FM The Truth.
Holding signs that read, "Adios Illegals," "Illegals out of USA," "Zero tolerance for illegals," "We can make our own burritos," and "Keep our kids safe — deport the criminals," the group delivered a signed petition urging police to change their policy to require officers to call Border Patrol "every time" they arrest somebody they discover is an illegal entrant.
Lance Altherr, a lifetime Tucson resident, said he would like to see Tucson police sign up for a national program to train local officers to enforce immigration law, called the 287(g) program. Nearly 600 officers in 34 states have participated in the program, including 160 in Maricopa County.
But until that happens, they should at least stop looking the other way, he said.
"I don't think we need TPD doing roadblocks or checkpoints, but when they encounter them in routine traffic stops or whatever call they get, they need to call the Border Patrol and inform them," Altherr said.
National and state legislators have also made it more popular to crack down.
A study released in August by the National Conference of State Legislatures reported that at least one piece of immigration-related legislation had been enacted in 41 of the 50 states and introduced in all 50. In total, 1,404 pieces of legislation were introduced, nearly two and a half times more than in 2006, and 170 bills had been enacted, more than double the number in 2006.
"The laws and the climate are really emboldening people who already harbor some anti-immigrant sentiment to use law to the disadvantage of the people they are seeking to hurt the most," said Ochoa O'Leary of the University of Arizona. "It's providing the leeway, the excuse, the justification, because they feel their actions will be more and more supported by the anti-immigrant segments of our society."
The climate has put the Tucson Police Department in a position where it can no longer ignore the issue.
"This is such a volatile issue right now in the nation; that's why it's receiving such attention," Tucson's assistant police chief, Roberto Villaseñor, said at a news conference last week. "It may have happened years ago and it could not have been such an issue. You have to look at this in the lens of what's occurring around the nation."
Fine line on the policy
Tucson police say that even without hard and fast guidelines, its officers have a good grasp on how to make case-by-case decisions on when to contact immigration authorities.
Officers know they need more than skin color to suspect somebody is here illegally, said Villaseñor.
But some worry that it could lead to profiling.
"The policy, as written, opens the door to potential abuse, potential racial profiling, potential civil rights violations," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Arizona. "You can't tell by looks alone who is a citizen and who is not."
Giving officers the discretion to develop a reasonable suspicion goes too far, said Soler Meetze. Without proper training in determining immigration status, they are more likely to use skin color and accent as determining factors, she said.
There's a danger that in Tucson the policy could create a class bias, too, a criminologist said. Officers would be more apt to target Latinos who fit the stereotype of newer immigrants rather than those who appear middle-class or are well-dressed, said Michalowski, who spent a one-year sabbatical in Tucson studying immigration.
But some call the racial profiling claims a hollow argument. If somebody is a legal resident or U.S. citizen, they have nothing to worry about, they say.
Police should be more aggressive and stop kowtowing to political correctness, said Dave Stoddard, a former Border Patrol supervisor and outspoken critic of illegal immigration.
"The policy should read, 'shall call.' Not 'may,' but 'shall,' " said Stoddard, who retired after 27 years in the Border Patrol.
It may already be happening more often, according to two local immigrants' rights groups.
Both Border Action Network and Coalición de Derechos Humanos say they are receiving consistent reports from community members about police officers either stopping them without valid reason, calling immigration authorities after stopping them for minor violations such as speeding or failure to stop at a stop sign, or questioning them about their immigration status when they are witnesses or victims.
The organizations report very few of the cases they hear about to police, though, because the victims are reluctant to get involved for fear of future problems. Those who are deported are even harder to get hold of, said Kat Rodriguez, coordinating organizer for Coalición de Derechos Humanos.
Not all officers are crossing the line, but the department's policy provides a loophole for officers who want to enforce immigration law, she said.
"There is definitely a much more increased anti-immigrant, anti-migrant, anti-Mexican sentiment in Arizona right now," Rodriguez said.

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