Thread: N.J.: County jail officers to seek illegals

Plenty of comments at the source link.
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County jail officers to seek illegals
By Bob Jordan • FREEHOLD BUREAU • July 10, 2009

The Monmouth County Sheriff's Office has received approval to have officers stationed at the county jail deputized as immigration agents, becoming one of the relatively few law local enforcement agencies with the broader powers.

The agreement was announced Friday by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The Monmouth office along with the Morristown Police Department were 2 of 11 new jurisdictions around the nation accepted into the so-called 287(g) program. Morristown is the first municipal police department in New Jersey to be accepted.

Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno has proposed having a handful of officers check immigration status at the jail. The approximately $50,000 in training costs would be recouped if the new program identifies undocumented prisoners, a classification that would bring in federal reimbursements, officials said.

Guadagno said, "If you are an illegal alien and commit a crime in Monmouth County, you will be identified, turned over to federal authorities and deported if appropriate. I'm pleased that the director of Homeland Security agrees that this approach makes sense from a public safety point of view."

But a critic of the 287(g) program, Charles "Shai" Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, said taking local officers away from traditional responsibilities "is bad law enforcement."

Goldstein said the federal immigration training is complex, pointing to a report by the International Chiefs of Police, which said Florida training participants "characterized immigration law as more complex than tax law," the report said.

"Now Morristown and the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office are going to require their officers to become proficient in an area that's more completed than tax law, which is what the Florida officers said in the report. You're taking police officers and sheriff's officers away from preventing murders and rapes and investigating crimes to do this. This is anti-smart law enforcement," Goldstein said.

The program has drawn strong opposition from immigrant advocates and divided opinions among law enforcement officials who feel it may undermine trust in immigrant communities where crime is often underreported.

At the start of the year, there were 66 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. with 287(g) programs. The only New Jersey participant up to now has been the Hudson County Department of Corrections.

Napolitano also unveiled a standardized agreement for any local jurisdiction that wants to deputize police to act on behalf of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

www.app.com

I still don't understand why any legal immigrant should worry about reporting a crime against them. But probably these are mostly illegal communities, or if a real legal is scared, there is probably something that they are either afraid of or guilty of.