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Police often work with immigration
Customs agent casts doubt on Tancredo's claims of 'sanctuary'

By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
May 13, 2005

A top regional immigration official says his agency has a great relationship with Denver law enforcement, and that he doesn't understand Congressman Tom Tancredo's allegation that the city provides "sanctuary" for illegal immigrants by refusing to turn them over to federal officials.

Immigration agents and Denver police often cooperate on criminal investigations, and federal agents routinely pick up illegal immigrants from the county jail, said Jeff Copp, special agent in charge of a four- state region for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

There are 42 inmates in the Denver jail being held for ICE. The number of inmates turned over to the federal agency in the past months or years was not available.

Denver sheriff Sgt. Darryle Brown said that ICE is told of every case in which an illegal immigrant is held in Denver for a crime. The agency then sends back a list of those inmates it is interested in.

Tancredo, a Republican from Littleton, charged earlier this week that Denver police policy "prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with federal officials on immigration matters . . ."

City officials say that isn't true.

Tancredo took his complaint to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thursday, asking him to enforce bans on illegal immigrant sanctuary policies.

"As a matter of practice many cities, including Denver, do not permit their law enforcement officers to notify federal immigration authorities when they come into contact with illegal aliens who commit relatively minor offenses," a news release from Tancredo's office said.

"As a result, many illegal aliens who have been in police custody go on to commit heinous crimes rather than being turned over to federal authorities for deportation."

Federal agents and Denver police work regularly together on drug and money laundering cases, Copp said. Those cases may involve violation of federal immigration and customs laws.

Copp said that ICE has no less than three agents regularly checking the Denver jail for foreigners with forged identity documents.

"The jail lets (ICE) know when they have somebody we might be interested in," he said.

Copp said that's routine around the state.

Faced with millions of illegal immigrants already in the country - 10 million by one estimate - ICE has set priorities for enforcement.

Top on the list is deportation of illegal immigrants who violate criminal laws, and those working at sites critical to national security.

For example, Copp said, ICE routinely checks new hires at Denver International Airport for legal status when they apply for their security badges.

Many jurisdictions such as Denver tell their officers that they aren't responsible for enforcing immigration laws unless a person is arrested for another crime.

In part, they do not want a large segment of the population afraid to cooperate with police investigations.

But also, local officers are "not authorized to enforce immigration law," ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said.

Simply being in the United States without permission is an administrative violation of immigration law, not a crime like theft or assault.

Local officers aren't trained to determine if someone is in the country illegally or if their documents are fake, Copp said.

At the jail, ICE staff pore over identity cards looking for forgeries.

Also, "they run the numbers on the documents, and see if the numbers come back bogus or not," Copp said.

When an undocumented person is ready for release from jail - whether innocent, pending trial or after serving a sentence - he is then transferred to the federal immigration jail in Aurora, pending a hearing on whether he is in the U.S. illegally.