Immigration enforcement training for county police officers might be a popular notion in some Northern Virginia jurisdictions, but not so for their neighbors across the Potomac River.
Montgomery County Council members stood united at a town meeting in Derwood against pursuing such training under federal program 287(g), in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement trains local law enforcement to conduct residency status checks of crime suspects that could lead to deportations.
Montgomery Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said last week that he was not interested in the training for officers because it requires significant time and funding, and he believes county police resources are better spent elsewhere. Virginia’s Prince William, Shenandoah and Rockingham counties and the town of Herndon already have adopted the program, and Loudoun and Culpeper counties have expressed interest in it.
Montgomery resident Mark Fennel at Wednesday night’s town meeting asked the council members whether they would support providing police “with the training necessary to fast-track illegal aliens out of the county and out of the country.”
“Usually at these town hall meetings, we don’t all speak to the same issue,” Council Member George Leventhal said.
“I think it’s very important and valuable that you’re hearing a unanimous County Council here stating that to go down the road that a few counties have done in Northern Virginia — Loudoun and Prince William — is expensive, counterproductive and leads to the harassment of our neighbors.”
Council Members Valerie Ervin and Roger Berliner were not at the meeting, but both told The Examiner on Thursday they, too, opposed spending county resources on the training.
Most council members maintained that immigration enforcement was the job of the federal government, but immigration is a hot topic in Derwood, home to the county’s newest day laborer center, and some council members expanded on the subject.
“We have had day laborers in this county before we had day laborer centers,” Council Member Phil Andrews said. “… You do have to have effective control at the borders, but it’s a different issue once people are here.”
“I think a great deal of decisive action needs to be taken on the federal level,” Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg said. “And I think anything we can do here in the county to provide opportunities to people is what we really have to focus on.”
