Mar 27, 2008 10:40 pm US/Central

N.Y. Town Cops May Soon Be Immigration Officers

Residents Fearful '287G' Will Force Them Out Of Area
SUFFERN, N.Y. (CBS) ― In a town where roughly one in five residents speaks Spanish, the police department is asking for permission to begin doing immigration enforcement work.

Suffern, N.Y. is the first jurisdiction in our area to ask the federal government to cross designate its police officers as federal agents trained to identify undocumented immigrants using federal data bases, and file deportation proceedings against arrested immigrants who have criminal records and no legal status in the U.S.

Mayor John Keegan says he asked his police chief to make the application after a series of crimes involving members of Suffern's growing immigrant community, which is mostly Mexican.

At an information meeting on the program Thursday night, an overflow crowd of about 200 people jammed the town's tiny meeting room to hear Keegan and Police Chief Clarke Osborn assure worried Hispanic residents that the proposal was not directed at them.

"We're going after criminals," Chief Osborn told the skeptical crowd. "It doesn't matter where they're from. If they're here illegally and they're criminals, that's what 287 G deals with."

He was referring to the federal law that allows the immigration enforcement partnership. In fact, supporters of the move wore special T-shirts emblazoned with the Suffern PD logo and the words "Support 287 G."

Suffern resident Gene Flynn told CBS station WCBS-TV In New York City he was annoyed by the suggestion that the idea was somehow directed against the growing Hispanic population in the Rockland County town.

"We're not targeting Hispanics," he insisted. "We're targeting felons, repeat felons."

It was hard not to notice, though, that many in the audience apparently opposed to the idea were Hispanics with little or no command of the English language. Some openly expressed their fears in their second language.

"If this law is approved," one man offered, "I won't feel safe anymore. I will no longer trust the police department. I will leave the town."

Some have suggested privately, that driving Hispanics from the community is precisely the goal. The town has businesses that offer "Se Habla Espanol," in their windows, and others that do not. Everyone agrees that a sizable percentage of the Spanish-speaking people who live in Suffern are undocumented. If the undocumented are scared off, it's believed the businesses that cater to them will suffer.

Steve Mannion, an attorney hired by the town to shepherd the 287G application through the federal system, says otherwise law-abiding undocumented aliens need not fear the provision.

"Rapists, murderers, robbers, child molesters are the target audience," he said, "not people driving without a license, not people working illegally."

But undocumented or "illegal" aliens are nervous by nature, and local police have always had a difficult time getting them to trust the authorities when they are victimized or can help solve a crime.

Teenager Maria Rabio was uneasy as she left the meeting.

"What they say sounds fine," she told WCBS-TV, "but I worry about someone taking advantage of this. I wonder why they feel they need it now."

Town officials still need to figure out where they'll house federal prisoners if their application to enforce Immigration violations succeeds. They are hopeful, however, that the plan could be in effect before Labor Day.
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