Immigration reforms having effect

Residency checks prompted by Newark triple slaying


Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/7/07
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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NEWARK — In the three months since the execution-style killings of three college students, most of the anti-crime initiatives announced have yet to be implemented or show results — with one notable exception.

Attorney General Anne Milgram's directive to police in New Jersey to notify federal authorities when they believe a suspect is in the country illegally has prompted a sharp rise in the number of queries to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, and in the number of suspects detained on immigration violations.

The shift in policy was spurred by the fact that 28-year-old Jose Carranza, considered a principal suspect in the triple slayings, is an illegal immigrant who was free on bail on child rape charges at the time of the murders.

Milgram's directive, announced on Aug. 22, targeted suspects arrested for violent crimes or drunken driving who appear to be in the country illegally — a policy that, had it been in place, could have kept Carranza off the streets.

"The increase in numbers shows that the directive is working," said David Wald, a spokesman for the attorney general. "We will continue to monitor this to see if there have to be any amendments."

Law enforcement authorities have said they did not know Carranza was an illegal immigrant when he was freed on bail. At the time, while some departments did check whether a person was a legal immigrant, they weren't required by the state to check the immigration status of someone they arrested.

Carranza is one of six suspects charged in the execution-style slayings of Terrance Aeriel, 18, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Iofemi Hightower, 20. Their bodies were found Aug. 4 behind Mount Vernon School, stunning a city all-to-familiar with violence.

Five of the six suspects, including Carranza, have pleaded not guilty. The sixth is scheduled to make a court appearance Wednesday.

According to statistics provided by ICE, the agency received 11,601 queries from New Jersey law enforcement authorities for the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, an increase of more than 50 percent over the same period a year ago.The number of queries spiked noticeably after Milgram's directive, to 1,347 in August and 1,404 in September after averaging 885 per month over the first 10 months.


More suspected illegal immigrants were detained as well. There were 87 detainers — which allow authorities to hold a suspected illegal immigrant even if he or she makes bail — placed on suspects in August and September this year, twice as many as in the same two months in 2006.

The directive's biggest advantage may have been that it established uniform reporting procedures.

"Before, we didn't know what every department's standard was, so we worked things out independently with each one. Now, everybody knows what everybody's standard is," ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooly said.

Other shifts as a result of the killings are less quantifiable. Essex County Prosecutor Paula T. Dow said she has noticed judges taking a closer look at immigration issues and setting more stringent bail terms. She also said her office has begun to examine pending cases for any immigration issues that need to be brought back into court.

Overall, she said, there is an increased sense of cooperation between different levels of law enforcement.

"I think we realize we just can't compete against each other any more, that it's not appropriate in the communities we live in," Dow said.

Several other initiatives were announced in the weeks following the triple slayings, some in direct response to the crime and some of which were already in progress:

Several state legislators pushed for tougher bail laws, which won't be taken up until after the new Legislature is seated in January. "When we have these kinds of catastrophes, people committing heinous crimes, we have to have some more measures to deal with it," said Sen. Shirley K. Turner, D-Mercer, who said she will introduce a bill requiring full cash bail for certain offenses.

Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker proposed several new city ordinances governing the sale and possession of firearms; these have yet to be voted on by th Municipal Council.

Newark rolled out a system of surveillance cameras to be installed in high-crime neighborhoods. The plan had been in the works for months but received a significant funding boost from local businesses after the murders.

Although the murders focused attention on the city, Newark's crime rate is lower now than it was a year ago, a development city officials credit to a wide-ranging revamping of police department strategies put in place independent of the killings.

"There's no silver bullet as far as reducing crime," Police Director Garry F. McCarthy said. "It's a whole confluence of strategies and tactics that are starting to bear fruit. I think all the steps in the last year, the getting out there and pounding the pavement, would have been having an effect, but that event still resonates in the community's ears."
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We will have real reform when Corzine is out of office. We will have real reform when we have a state Attorney General who actually does his/ her job. We will have real reform when each NJ county has a man like Christopher Christie overseeing all the towns in that county in every county in this state.

That will be real reform!

Posted by: wjgrenci on Wed Nov 07, 2007 9:04 am

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