County wants to fight illegal immigration
Greenville needs federal OKs, may use business ordinance to join in task

By Nan Lundeen • STAFF WRITER • November 10, 2008


By pursuing local enforcement of federal immigration laws, Greenville County joins local governments in pockets across the country that are taking on the controversial task.
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In South Carolina, only Beaufort and York counties have agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, at this point.

Advocates of local enforcement, such as Greenville County Councilman Bob Taylor, say illegal immigrants are a burden on schools and health-care systems, but critics say it leads to ineffective, piecemeal enforcement and opens local government to lawsuits.

Taylor has proposed that employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers could potentially lose their right to do business in unincorporated parts of Greenville County under a ordinance requiring business registration.

Greenville County Sheriff Steve Loftis also is interested in pursuing federal programs that authorize sheriff 's deputies to enforce federal immigration laws, but, "we don't have enough manpower to make the task force part of it efficient," said spokesman Master Deputy Mike Hildebrand.

Greenville County is pursuing two programs offered by ICE, according to County Administrator Joe Kernell. The programs would work with or without a business registration ordinance, he said.

Nationwide, ICE has executed 67 memorandum of agreements with local law enforcement agencies under 287(g), a section of federal immigration law, ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said. The section was added in 1996.

She said $56 million has been budgeted for 287(g) in 2009 but couldn't reveal the status of applications.

About half the agreements deal with identifying illegal immigrants in jails, half with task force investigations and some deal with both, according to the ICE Web site.

Taylor's proposed $15 registration fee differs from a business license, neither of which the county requires now, because it doesn't tax receipts. It would link the registration to lawful employment.

"If there was the appearance of illegal aliens working, then somebody could look at it and decide whether or not that were in fact true," Taylor said.

Under Beaufort County's ordinance, county consultants sift through businesses' federal I-9 forms, which require employee identification, according to county Administrator Gary Kubic.

Muneer Ahmad, a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center who teaches a course in local enforcement of federal immigration law, said some local jurisdictions are being sued because of enforcement policies. It's costly and harmful to local government reputations, he said.

Ahmad said he hadn't seen any instances where the federal government authorizes local authorities to review I-9 forms.

He said Congress put strict limitations on how I-9 forms can be used in 1986 out of concern that U.S. citizens as well as noncitizens legally authorized to work could be put at risk for discrimination.

"We have been very careful to make sure that we are constitutionally accurate," Kubic said. "That's why we are inspecting a required federal form."

Cesar Parales, president and general counsel of New York City-based LatinoJustice, said tying business registration to legal employment would burden business and, "it's a silly political stunt, I think, on the part of the politicians who can then turn to their constituents and say, 'look how tough I am on undocumented immigrants.'"

But, Taylor said, "it's not an added burden because that's something they're supposed to be doing now."

Greenville County Attorney Mark Tollison said he hopes to bring a proposal before a Committee of the Whole this month that would be "valid and enforceable."

Pickens County in October passed an ordinance requiring vendors, contractors and subcontractors who do business with the county to certify they don't knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants. Violators will be removed from the county's vendors list for three years.

In Beaufort County, a computer randomly chooses a variety of businesses -- 600 of about 4,800 have been inspected so far -- and none have lost their business license, nor has the ordinance been tested in court, Kubic said.

The county, which already required business licenses, raised the fees prior to Jan. 1 when its new ordinance went into effect, raising an additional $500,000, he said. He expects the consultants' fee to be about $250,000.

The county works with employers whose I-9 forms raise questions, he said.

And Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner said his five-deputy ICE task force received 18 red-flagged audit packages from the county to investigate and expects to receive more.

The federal government trains task force deputies, but the county pays their salaries, and Tanner said he hired four more deputies.

It costs about $80,000 to put a new deputy on the road in Greenville County, according to Hildebrand.
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