About 12 years ago, when I lived in Southern California, I had a co-worker — I’ll call him Matt (because that was his name) — who was a former police officer from Glendale, near Pasadena.
I remember him saying how many of the offenders he arrested were from other countries, and undoubtedly a lot of them were in America illegally. Matt recalled that, under law, he was not allowed to determine whether they were aliens or not.
“You couldn’t even ask them the question,” I remember him telling me, somewhat in frustration.
Well, now law enforcement is beginning to ask the question.
Last week the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the Department of Homeland Security, joined a North Carolina law enforcement leader in announcing the impressive fruits of a joint program designed to capture, identify and deport illegals caught breaking the law.
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph said at a news conference in Charlotte that 930 illegal immigrants had been identified among arrestees over the first seven months of the program.
Of those, at least 128 have already been expelled from the country, and the remainder is in deportation proceedings. The Charlotte Observer reported that 450 of those arrested would have been released if the program weren’t in place.
The program was established in Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, passed by Congress in 1996. It deputizes local and state police officers as agents of ICE, training them and giving them the authority “to identify, process, and when appropriate, detain immigration offenders they encounter during their regular, daily law-enforcement activity.”
ICE agreed to work with Mecklenburg County officials in February to instruct some sheriff’s personnel, and by May 1, deputies had completed an “intensive” four-week training session. They immediately began a program that included interviewing foreign national inmates, processing criminal aliens, and preparing documentation for deportation proceedings.
But within months, the cooperative effort became both a success and a problem.
“So many illegal immigrant criminals have been identified through my 287(g) program, it is causing me a jail space problem,” Pendergraph said in written testimony in August to the House Commission on Empowering Local Law Enforcement to Combat Illegal Immigration. “One of the agreements with ICE in the beginning was for their removal of the identified offenders as soon as possible. I don’t think even they foresaw the numbers we would be dealing with.”
Still, despite the jail capacity issue, Mecklenburg’s success has attracted notice from elsewhere.
“That success, frankly, has triggered interest throughout the country,” said Julie Myers, assistant secretaryfor the Department of Homeland Security. The program is not unique to the Charlotte area. Law enforcement in Alabama, Florida, Arizona and Los Angeles carry similar 287(g) authority.
Trouble is, as Pendergraph explained, even though this tremendously effective program exists already, it carries the same problems that overall failed illegal immigration enforcement suffers: Lack of resources.
“The Removal and Detention Division of ICE is overwhelmed by the numbers we are generating for removal in Mecklenburg County alone,” Pendergraph said in August.
Unfortunately, little can be done without the financing to make 287(g) work on a broad basis. President Bush has shown to have a weak stomach for the enforcement issue, and now has a Congress coming in January that is balking at funding for 700 miles of border fence that was authorized earlier this year.
That adds to the problem, as Pendergraph says he regularly sees repeat offenders who have been deported in the past. Suspects can return easily because they agree to voluntary removal in exchange for law enforcement dropping charges against them.
“This, in effect, wipes the slate clean for a criminal, gives him/her a free ride home at taxpayer expense to visit family, and then begin the journey back to the United States to victimize other U.S. citizens,” Pendergraph said.
The sheriff’s experience clearly points to a multi-pronged problem that only a comprehensive, determined approach will resolve. Naysayers claim a border fence won’t work, you can’t round up all those illegals, etc. They basically are changing the subject by ignoring the need for a broad solution.
But as Myers said, the interest among local law enforcement across the country is strong. Waukesha County, Wis., Tulsa County, Okla., and the Tennessee Highway Patrol are among the many who have applied for a 287(g) relationship with ICE. “Grassroots” law enforcement has shown they have the will. Congress and the president need to provide the way.
Paul Chesser is an associate editor for the John Locke Foundation. Contact him at [email protected].
