Thread: AZ:Debate Continues Over Deputizing Border Agent

Debate Continues Over Deputizing Border Agent

Posted: Jan 9, 2008 04:33 PM MST

By Som Lisaius, KOLD News 13

In one of the more heated board of supervisors meetings in years, immigrant rights activists got at least a temporary reprieve Tuesday when the Pima County Sheriff's department withdrew its request to deputize an agent with the United States Border Patrol.

"We're going to go back and talk to the Border Patrol. We're going to go back and talk to community members. Then we're going to try and come up with the best option that fits the needs of our department."

That's Sheriff Bureau Chief George Heaney, who says the idea was to add a single Border Patrol agent to his department's border crime unit.

Over the last year, there's been a tremendous spike in violent crime along the border. Adding a federal agent to this newly formed unit would potentially help both agencies' objectives.

Says Border Patrol Agent James Gonzalez, "The Border Patrol has always and will always support local federal and state authorities and agencies."

Critics of the idea say victims would be afraid to report crimes for fear that Border Patrol agents--and not deputies--would respond to calls and potentially deport illegal citizens.

But the Sheriff's Department insists the objective of the agreement is not enforcing immigration law--but going after violent criminals along the border--and that deputizing one agent would better facilitate the department in that process.

"It would allow that agent to make an arrest, to go to court and be able to utilize the full backing of Arizona state law," Agent Gonzalez says.

Bureau Chief Heaney agrees, adding, "At some point in the future once we can iron out all of the details, we go back to the drawing board, we find out the county's interest, the Border Patrol's interest and our department's interest and come up with a solution that fits everybody's needs--then we're back in business."

Again, there's still no definitive timetable when or if this is going to be revisited.

But according to several people we spoke to this isn't a dead issue, meaning there's probably more heated discussion ahead.


http://www.kold.com/global/story.asp?s= ... =Printable

Critics of the idea say victims would be afraid to report crimes for fear that Border Patrol agents--and not deputies--would respond to calls and potentially deport illegal citizens.

Am sick and tired of this same old excuse--can't they come up with a logical defense?

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

And they Bow to special interest again....these people could care less if the United States into Mexico and they are succeeding.