Brown County
Local Law Enforcers Looking for Fake Immigration Documents

Updated: Jan 24, 2008 08:24 PM PST

By Sarah Thomsen

Is it a passport or a forgery? Is a temporary resident card real or a forgery?

There are ways to find out, and that's what agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plan to teach investigators with the Brown County Sheriff's Department and other area law enforcement agencies.

In a new effort to get fake IDs out of the hands of illegal immigrants, federal immigration officials plan to be in Green Bay on Friday to meet with police chiefs and the Brown County sheriff.

"It's more so how to identify -- and that's what they really go after is the manufacturing of -- illegal documents," Chief Deputy John Gossage of the sheriff's department said.

The sheriff's department says it set up the meeting between ICE officials and local law enforcement so they could start working together better to locate and deport illegal immigrants who are committing crimes.

They would not be conducting sweeps or raids of homes or businesses looking for people in the country illegally.

"Basically what it's to do is identify illegal documents, something that will assist us," Gossage said. "If we were to get a tip, say, that there is somebody maybe manufacturing illegal documents, that's when we'd contact ICE."

The sheriff's department says it started working closely with ICE last year when the county board of supervisors wanted to look at a program that would make local deputies acting agents of ICE to help deport illegal immigrants locked up in the county jail for crimes.

But last week the sheriff's department and county leaders scrapped the idea, deciding instead that ICE is doing a good job with deportation, and they should now focus on investigations of other violent crimes.

"And now on the investigative side we're looking for help from federal officials of what to look for -- signs and things of that nature," Gossage said. "Any type of violent crimes, things of violent nature, that's what they look into."

Investigators should begin training how to spot illegal documents soon.

http://www.wbay.com/global/story.asp?s=7772039