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When cops probe immigrants

Costa Mesa to identify border violators, and some fear it's a trend
By Susan Ferriss -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Monday, February 27, 2006

Mayor Allan Mansoor of the Southern California city of Costa Mesa says he just wants all the crime-fighting tools available.
Not all illegal immigrants convicted or accused of crimes in his city end up deported, as they should, he said. He wants federal agents to train some of the city's police officers to help investigate felony suspects' immigration status and flag them for deportation.

"This is not going to involve any sweeps or be directed at victims of crime," said Mansoor, who is also an Orange County deputy sheriff who works in the county jail. He says he has seen suspected illegal immigrants who appear not to have been deported return to jail under new charges.

But Mansoor's plan, the first of its kind for a U.S. city, is under attack by civil rights groups worried police will abuse their authority and damage relationships with immigrants and minorities.

Costa Mesa's decision is reverberating among law enforcement agencies nationwide that are also weighing how far to go - and how wise it is - to instruct officers to identify illegal immigrants.

Sacramento Police Chief Albert Nájera opposes the notion of police taking over immigration duties broadly.

"It's chaos in the making," he said. "There is no way on God's green Earth we can go out there enforcing immigration laws and then say, 'By the way, call us when someone rapes you or fires a round into your house.' "

In the 1970s, law enforcement agencies in California began forbidding police officers from asking about immigration status on the grounds that was the job of federal agents and that officers would be sowing ill will.

In response to crime and security concerns, however, a small but growing number of jurisdictions are invoking a 1996 law that allows them to seek training to deputize officers to investigate the legal status of suspects they encounter in enforcement duties.

Agents of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement - ICE - regularly enter jails to identify illegal immigrants and note that prisoners should be deported after judicial proceedings or serving their sentences. Local police often tip ICE about who they think might be an illegal immigrant.

But ICE agents say they don't have enough personnel and could use trained help to keep pace with the number of undocumented people in jail.

Under the training agreements, ICE agents supervise deputized police and continue to be responsible for taking custody of detainees for deportation.

Although Nájera would oppose having officers conduct detailed probes into suspects' legal status, he would welcome greater access to federal databases listing illegal immigrants who have been convicted of past crimes and ordered deported.

In California, 12,500 parolees are in custody awaiting deportation, 114 of them in the Sacramento area, Nájera said.

Local jurisdictions have latitude in how to use the authority the training gives them, which is what concerns civil rights groups. There's no firm rule against deputized police screening people they stop for a minor traffic violation, for example.

But ICE's "priority focus" is for local police to focus on "the criminal element," said Robert Hines, the agent in charge of coordinating requests for training.

He said 11 requests for training are pending, including from police departments in New England and counties in Texas and North Carolina. Sheriff's departments in the California counties of San Bernardino and Riverside have been approved for training; Orange County's request is pending. Los Angeles County started limited screenings in January following training last fall.

ICE's four-to five-week course covers the complexities of immigration law and document verification, as well as how to avoid racial profiling.

Arizona state employees have been trained to screen foreigners in the state prison system. In Alabama, 44 state troopers and employees are trained to investigate foreigners who apply for a driver's license or who are stopped for traffic violations.

ICE has trained 44 members of a Florida multijurisdictional task force that investigates drug trafficking and other crimes.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has a pilot program, limited by county supervisors to civilian jail staff who screen foreign-born inmates convicted of crimes.

"We've got more than enough to keep our hands full. We don't care about the guy selling oranges on the street, the lady who is the sweatshop worker. They're not doing the criminal acts in Los Angeles County," said Sgt. Margarito Robles, a department spokesman.

Sacramento County Sheriff's Department spokesman Sgt. R.L. Davis said his department hasn't considered the training. "If given the opportunity, we would look at it, review it, sit down with our citizens advisory board and talk about whether to deploy it," he said.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department estimates that 14 percent of its jail inmates are suspected illegal immigrants. The sheriff wants to train 200 deputies in the jail, gang and narcotics divisions. County supervisors have yet to approve the plan.

Costa Mesa plans to train 30 to 40 officers out of a force of 162 to check the status of suspected felons when they are booked.

A divided City Council approved the proposal on a 3-2 vote, but it hasn't yet been submitted to ICE.

"The blue-suited officer out in the field driving a black-and-white patrol car would not be doing the enforcement," said Lt. Allen Huggins of the Costa Mesa Police Department.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund is not convinced.

"The concern is the temptation to use the (training) agreement in other ways, either to break a witness or just to harass somebody," said John Trasvińa, MALDEF's senior vice president for law and policy.

"Right now, I think state and local governments are frustrated with the inaction of the federal government on illegal immigration," Trasvińa said. But he's concerned about an increase in local attempts to confront and detain suspected illegal immigrants.

Latino activists are angry at Mansoor for appearing as a special guest recently at a meeting of a vocal immigration restrictionist group. He was lauded as a hero by the founder of the self-styled Minutemen Project, which last year dispatched armed civilians to the Mexican border.

Nájera said he appreciates the desire for more tools to fight crime. He said he also thinks counties are trying to get a bigger share of federal reimbursement money for the incarceration costs of prisoners identified as illegal immigrants.

But he suspects "political overtones" in some politicians' decisions to seek police authority to screen immigrants.

"Depending on the demographics of your town," he said, "being seen as tough on illegal immigration is a feather in their caps."


About the writer:
The Bee's Susan Ferriss can be reached at (916) 321-1267 or sferriss@sacbee.com.