Thread: NE: Police Chief: Az. style law would cost more than Worth

Police chief says Arizona-style law would cost more than it's worth

Police chief says Arizona-style law would cost more than it's worth

By NANCY HICKS / Lincoln Journal Star JournalStar.com
Posted: Wednesday, March 2, 2011 10:00 am
(30) Comments


* Related: PDF: Police chief's letter to the Legislature on immigration bill
http://journalstar.com/documents/pdf_ec ... b22b8.html


An Arizona-style immigration law would increase Lincoln's police costs without dramatically increasing the number of illegal residents deported, according to Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady.

In a letter to city Finance Director Don Herz, Casady listed the kind of costs local police would have if Nebraska required police to investigate and arrest illegal immigrants.

Local government would have the investigative costs of trying to determine the legal status of a person, jail costs to detain people after being arrested, more jail costs for people found guilty of "trespassing by an illegal alien" and the cost of defending false arrest lawsuits.

Yet it's unlikely many of those people actually would be deported, the chief wrote.

"Simply put, no matter how many people we would arrest for being in the country illegally, the USCIS (immigration service) has limited capacity for pursuing deportation proceedings."

Now, the federal immigration service takes custody of only half of the illegal aliens booked for crimes in Lancaster County, Casady said.

He also noted that the law (LB4 proposed by Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont would not change the budget for federal authorities, he noted.

"I fear that for many of the defendants arrested … we would simply be incurring these costs only to have the defendant walk out of the jail after satisfying their local charges with little or no further action by USCIS."

Casady said the "unfunded mandate" would not be a good return on investment.

"For my own tax dollar, I would prefer that we focus efforts on the deportation of aliens who have already been convicted of crimes," he wrote.

Casady did not provide specific costs, but he said the city likely would spend a full week of a police officer's time each month if police had contact with 50 people who might be illegal aliens. And that estimate of 50 people a month probably is conservative, he said.

Casady's comments were sent to the Legislature's fiscal office to help staff determine the cost of Janssen's bill, Herz said. The bill is scheduled for a hearing at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Judiciary Committee.

Reach Nancy Hicks at 402-473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.

http://journalstar.com/news/unicameral/ ... 53071.html

Local government would have the investigative costs of trying to determine the legal status of a person, jail costs to detain people after being arrested, more jail costs for people found guilty of "trespassing by an illegal alien" and the cost of defending false arrest lawsuits.

I do not agree with above statements, reasons why...Americans safety and lives means more than any amount of money. We have illegal criminals hiding in all parts of the U.S. and they must be seek out by all law enforcement agencies, brought to justice and deported out of this Country.