About two months ago, Herndon Police Chief Toussaint Summers spoke dismissively of a federal program that would train his officers to take on added roles in immigration enforcement.
The fact that so few departments had taken advantage of the training meant that “it must not be that necessary,” he told The Examiner in late July, in response to a question on why the town’s department had inquired about but never followed up on the controversial program.
But last month, he recommended to the Town Council to enter into the Department of Homeland Security’s 287(g) training, which would give local police the ability to initiate paperwork to deport illegal aliens incarcerated for other crimes. The concept got preliminary approval from the council in late September.
The chief’s change of mind, he says, follows revelations of the nature of the program. Summers began weighing the decision as early as 2002, but was concerned that it would require too many officers and hinder community policing. A common criticism of local immigration enforcement is that it would ruin inroads between local police and minority populations and prevent the reporting of more major crimes.
“Over the four or five years I’ve been looking at it, the major question was ‘what does the agency do with it when we get it,’ and [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] couldn’t answer that,” Summers said Tuesday.
The program will only be put in place for the “worst of the worst,” illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes or felonies, and would not result in street roundups, he said.
In recent years, Herndon has become the local epicenter of a national immigration debate. The town recently turned out some of its elected leaders who supported a government-sponsored day laborer center. The town is about a quarter Hispanic, according to U.S. census data.
