The illegal dilemma

Illegal immigration is an incendiary issue in the United States these days.  Last week, I was correctly quoted (mainly) in a short news article that summed up a two-hour meeting I attended with the Mayor’s Multicultural Advisory Committee.  Partly through my own ill-chosen words, and partly through the filtering process that distills a long meeting into a few paragraphs, I felt as though my remarks and opinions were mischaracterized.  I’m not blaming anyone but myself, though, I am just trying to clarify.

The Committee asked me to explain what our practice was regarding notifying Immigrations and Customs Enforcement when an illegal alien was arrested or contacted.  They had become aware of a specific case, in which a 43 year old woman from El Salvador had been arrested for a misdemeanor by the police department, and subsequently became the subject of a deportation proceeding.  She had entered the United States legally in December, 2001 with a short-term visa, and was arrested by LPD for identity fraud after she tried to open a bank account under an assumed name with fake ID.

I explained that the fingerprint record of the arrest was submitted to the Federal government, as prints have been for decades.  In this particular case, the record matched an ICE database record on a person who had overstayed her visa by more than 8 years.  The existence of these databases, and the rapidity with which such comparisons can be made makes these kinds of matches much faster and more likely today than in the past.  We hadn’t gone out of our way to bring the weight of the Federal system down upon her at all—she merely was discovered by ICE in the ordinary course of business.  We did our job, ICE did theirs, and that’s the way it is supposed to be.

Some of the members of the Committee, however, had been concerned that the Lincoln Police Department had signed up for a Federal program by which selected local law enforcement officers are trained to initiate immigration proceedings, the Section 287 program.  We have not, and I am not interested in investing our resources in this manner. Having just lost 6 front line staff in the budget process, I assure you we have plenty to do without assuming work that is vested by the Constitution in the Federal government and is the statutory responsibility of a Federal agency.  In explaining this  to the committee, I said something to the effect of “I’m not interested in helping the Federal government do its job.”  Bad way to be quoted, although that is in fact what I said, or something reasonably close to it.  I was narrowly referring to signing up for the Section 287 program.

Let me set the record straight.  I appreciate the work of our Federal law enforcement agencies, and we work closely with them.  We both receive from, and render assistance to, Federal law enforcement agencies regularly—including ICE.  Every single fingerprint record we collect for arrestees is provided to these databases, and ICE is able to check any foreign-born subject against their database.  I think it is very important that we continue to do so, and I was correctly quoted on that, too.  I have never, ever, declined assistance to any Federal agency. 

This particular case is unusual, in that a women who—except for her obvious immigration violation--had otherwise been a law-abiding local resident got arrested for a fraud offense (I am told she needed an account for direct deposit from an employer, and was scared she would be caught by E-Verify), and  was quickly detained for an immigration violation by ICE.  My experience has been that trying to get someone deported is often a maddening process even when the subject has been arrested on multiple occasions and is is terrifying our community and  driving the local police crazy.  It takes a lot of time, and requires convictions for just-the-right-kind of crimes.  

What frustrates me the most about Federal immigration policy is that local police departments are being increasingly burdened by the intransigence of our Federal officials, who are failing to come to terms with the issue, and failing to provide sufficient resources to deal with it.  This women’s visa expired in February, 2002.  Why wasn’t the INS looking for her years ago?  She hasn’t exactly been in hiding.  How much more difficult is it to send her home nine years later than it would have been in the Spring of 2002?  How many other people have overstayed their visas by years, and how many of those have bought homes, had children, and otherwise sunk deep roots? 

I know this is a complex issue, without easy solutions.  But by continuing with the status quo, the day of reckoning is just being put off, and it gets harder with each passing day.  As States like Arizona, and cities like Fremont, Nebraska pass their own laws aimed at controlling illegal immigration, local police departments are being asked to fill the void created by the Federal government’s abdication of responsibility, and their under-resourcing of the effort.  This leave us between a rock and a hard place, and I don’t like that.

I have my own opinions on what might be done at the Federal level to begin to straighten this mess out.  My personal opinion is similar to proposals made in the past by President Bush and  by Congressman Tom Osborne.  Those weren’t exactly embraced even in their own political party, but I think they were more realistic than most, and would start us on a more productive path than the one we are on, which seems to be an aimless wander down a road to nowhere.