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Supervisor Wants Immigration Enforcement Training For Deputies
By Dan Telvock

(Created: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 11:34 AM EDT)



Seeking to bring the Loudoun County government into the debate over illegal immigration enforcement, Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) asked the sheriff Tuesday night to participate in a national program that provides training required for local deputies to perform certain duties of federal immigration enforcement officers.

Loudoun Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson told supervisors that he needed to review the program, called Section 287(g)-an amendment to the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act-before he could make a decision on whether he wanted his deputies to take the training.

"In everything I've seen or heard, once you sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the federal authorities, your person becomes theirs," said Simpson, who consistently has warned supervisors that he feels is office is understaffed at currently approved levels. Training would require deputies to be off the streets for more than a month.

Delgaudio said he made the request following a Herndon Town Council decision last month to target illegal immigrants by seeking the federal training for members of its police force. The supervisor said with the rise of gang activity in Loudoun, and particularly in his district of Sterling, the training may help combat the problem.

Simpson said the powers do not give the trained deputies blanket enforcement over suspected illegal immigrants. All it does, he said, was give more powers to local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws on alleged criminals who are already in custody.

The amendment is designed to multiply ICE forces by improving cooperation and communication with local agencies. While local law enforcement officers can investigate, detain and apprehend illegal immigrants, they cannot deport them. For deportation to begin, a federal agent must take jurisdiction of the person. The training will empower local officers to assist federal agents in the deportation process. The training is five weeks long and provided at a federal law enforcement center on Glynco, GA, or a site near Costa Mesa, CA.

Virginia State Police have declined to participate in the training.

Simpson said his agency has a healthy working relationship with ICE, chiefly because a federal agent serves on the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force. That agent is often available within a few hours. He said this federal program might be more beneficial to localities that do not have the a readily available ICE agent.

In a memo to Town Manager Steve Owen, Herndon Police Chief Toussaint E. Summers Jr. states that newspapers incorrectly reported that his agency rejected the state training.

"Based on the initial assessment of 287(g), it appears that the Herndon Police Department could benefit from the additional training but would realize very limited arrest/enforcement authority," wrote Summers, who is also chairman of the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force.

Delgaudio said the approval this year of a formal day laborer site-which he called an "illegal alien job center"-on the Loudoun border in Herndon and the arrest in Ashburn this summer of an alleged MS-13 suspected of escaping from an El Salvador prison, "gives me concern that other foreign criminals may be seeking, or will seek, refuge in our community."

"I propose a model allowing participation in the program, at a reasonable cost, without distracting your hard-working deputies from their essential duties," Delgaudio wrote Simpson in a Sept. 12 letter.

Simpson said he and other law enforcement leaders discussed the program during a recent meeting and he proposed a regional approach to the illegal immigrant problem, "but not everybody was in agreement with that."

"It's kind of a toss up right now about what it's going to do for us," Simpson said about the program. "At minimum, we get some good training out of it."

Hearing the sheriff's concerns, Delgaudio asked Simpson to return to the Nov. 20 Public Safety Committee meeting with a report on his findings and statistics of the number of illegal immigrants detained in the Adult Detention Center. Simpson said he was aware of at least nine federal deportation detainers for locally held inmates.