Thread: TN-Nashville rag bemoans 287(g) program

287(g)'s dragnet approach in need of sensible revision
Today's topic: Immigration checks under fire
Read Comments(13) Our View
Seventeen months have passed since the Davidson County Sheriff's Department launched its immigration-enforcement program. To describe the program's record as mixed would be an understatement.

Begun amid an outcry over high-profile cases of violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants, the 287(g) program allows police to check on the immigration status of arrestees. If the arrestee is found to be in the country illegally, the check more often than not leads to deportation, regardless of the disposition of the arrest.


The program has had its successes. In the first 12 months, 3,000 arrestees were found to be here illegally; most of those individuals were later deported or otherwise left the city.

But only 19 percent of those were charged with felonies — homicide, rape, aggravated assault or armed robbery — the type of serious crimes that led to the program. Most arrestees had committed traffic misdemeanors, and only 38 percent had previous arrest records, again mostly misdemeanors.

This track record has raised concerns within Nashville's immigrant community, because for every arrest of a potentially dangerous felon, there are more cases of people being deported who were loitering or did not have a proper driving certificate.

Mind you: The 3,000 were here illegally. But holding so many people on virtually any charge to await federal justice contributes to an environment of fear for foreign-born residents, whether or not they are here legally.

The low point for this program occurred in July, when Juana Villegas, a foreign-born pregnant woman arrested on careless-driving charges, was shackled to a hospital bed during part of her labor. She was restrained specifically because she was suspected of being an illegal immigrant. The charges were later dismissed, but the outcry from human-rights groups and widespread publicity over her treatment led Sheriff Daron Hall to change the rules. Pregnant inmates now will be restrained only if there is credible information that they might try to escape or present a danger to themselves or others.

Good steps, but it shouldn't take Amnesty International and The New York Times to bring common sense to the process.

Common sense is what leaders of Nashville's immigrant community and members of the Sheriff's Immigration Advisory Committee are calling for. The committee, required under terms of 287(g), has urged the sheriff to set guidelines for which arrestees undergo interrogation, instead of subjecting to it anyone who is foreign-born.

Sheriff Hall may, indeed, be heeding the committee's advice, but will have a harder time convincing local immigrants of that after dismissing from the committee the lawyer who represented Villegas.

Hall has said he dismissed Elliott Ozment for publicly misrepresenting the sheriff's intentions. Each accuses the other of lying. But two individuals who are committed to this effort should be able to work out differences through the Immigration Advisory Committee. The sheriff appears to have gone too far with the dismissal; what will happen to the next member who disagrees with him?

That's just the sort of doubt that the blind eye of the immigration sweep engenders. Hall has shown his commitment to public safety, and should be commended for getting some dangerous criminals off the streets under this program. But legal immigrants should not have to face a rigorous interrogation after a traffic stop simply because they are not from here. That treatment needlessly separates families and discourages newcomers and new business to a city.

There is room for flexibility in the immigration-enforcement program, as the Villegas case has shown. The sheriff should work with his advisory committee to make that happen.



http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art ... 40353/1008

E-Verify all I-9s and clarify the 14th Amendment - Governments: local, state, and federal has been ignoring or doing nothing about immigration and population control in America.

I-9s have given American Jobs to illegal criminal aliens committing fraud and the employers getting the green light from the government agencies that it is fine.