Police, ICE must walk fine line when they team up

By Logan Jenkins,
Thursday, July 1, 2010 at midnight
Call Logan at 760-737-7555

Polimigra.

It’s a Latino neologism, a new word, coined a few years ago in the Chicago area to describe the perceived blurring of the line between local police and La Migra.

There’s nothing new about men and women in blue operating in concert with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). They do not — and should not — exist in separate universes.

But let’s not pretend it’s a simple working relationship with crystal-clear boundaries.

With 12 million or more illegal residents living deep in the American grain, law enforcement is anything but simple. Missions can contradict each other.

To do their jobs effectively over time, police must cultivate trust within immigrant communities. (With the aid of witnesses, beat cops come to the rescue of the afflicted, no matter what their legal status.)

To do their jobs, however, immigration agents must cultivate fear. (If you’re illegal, the ICEman cometh to deport you.)

For the foreseeable future, therefore, American law enforcement elicits ambiguity, ambivalence and angst in many poor communities.

Of course, many on both sides of the political spectrum yearn for clarity.

On the right, the reflexive question is: What part of illegal don’t you understand? The only answer is mass deportation.

On the left, the reflexive response, in so many words, is: What part of compassion can’t you feel? The only answer is a humane form of amnesty.

In between those opposite poles, the majority of Americans are suspended, vacillating between anger over the costs associated with an illegal population the size of New York plus Los Angeles and the human sympathy for countless dirt-poor families who suffered enormously to seek menial work in the richest country in the world.

On one point, however, there’s no ambiguity, ambivalence or angst.

Illegal residents who commit serious crimes need to be deported or imprisoned. No matter how much hearts bleed for the plight of hardworking migrants, the bleeding stops at felonies.

That’s how the Escondido Police Department’s pioneering partnership with full-time ICE officers threads a fine needle.

The new policy, we’re told, is about deporting serious criminals, not intimidating law-abiding noncitizens who are, by strict definition, criminals.

In the migrant community, however, the arrangement inevitably leads to more ambiguity, ambivalence and angst.
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The working details are somewhat murky, but this much we know: ICE agents are actively assisting Escondido police officers to determine which criminal suspects are living in the country illegally.

For several years, it should be noted, the county has participated in a national program called Secure Communities that allows sheriff’s deputies to run the fingerprints of booked suspects through a national database. If there’s a hit, the ICEman cometh.

In Escondido, La Migra is cutting to the police chase, as it were.

ICE agents are on scene to help sort through who’s a “legalâ€