Thread: Traffic Stops Can End in Deportation

Traffic Stops Can End in Deportation

Tribuna Connecticut, News Report, Emanuela P. Lima, Posted: Mar 07, 2008

After entering the United States illegally, Robson Nunes Da Cruz received a deportation order. He disregarded it and moved north, to Danbury, Conn. But his new American life came to a halt when he wound up in the custody of immigration agents as a result of a routine traffic stop.

Da Cruz was pulled over last December for having too much snow on his car, covering its rear lights. He did not have a license. But the reason for his arrest was the outstanding deportation order that popped up on the laptop screen when the officer entered his name. Da Cruz was held at the Danbury Police Department until Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents picked him up.

A large number of undocumented immigrants faces this fate daily.

Since 2002, hundreds of thousands of names of people with outstanding deportation orders, or who have failed to appear in Immigration court has been added into an FBI database, which police officers across the country use to search for warrants.

This alone has transformed police departments across the country into extensions of the immigration bureaucracy, even if the department has no formal partnership with the federal agency like the recently approved ICE ACCESS program in Danbury.

"This is a much bigger danger to illegal immigrants then our partnership with ICE,"Â

[quote]According to the Danbury Police Chief, the only way that an undocumented can dodge the bullet is to stay out of trouble. "Do not come to the attention of the police. No matter how insignificant the violation is, you never know if your name is in that database,"Â

National MEDIA coverage of this would go a long way in making our roads safer. For many years, here in Texas, unlicensed, uninsured, non-English speaking people are routinely released without even a ticket.
I am tired of the illegals getting special treatment. Even the polititians treat the foreign nationals better than American citizens.