Amy Taylor

Why Shouldn’t the Police Enforce Immigration Laws?

The House Republican leadership's immigration agenda includes a provision that is making local law enforcement very upset. One of the House-passed measures, H.R. 6095, includes language from the CLEAR Act, a bill that would give state and local police agencies the authority to enforce federal civil immigration laws. This means that state and local police departments would have to use their current resources to arrest and detain, not criminals, but individuals who have violated civil immigration laws -such as entering the country unlawfully or overstaying a visa.

Police departments across the country are opposed to this idea. They cite a lack of training to enforce complex federal laws, a lack of resources to do the work of the federal government, and a severe hampering of their ability to effectively police communities if given this new responsibility. Police departments have expressed the concern that such a step would cause a chilling effect on immigrant communities' willingness to report crimes and serve as witnesses. Generally, state and local police try to separate themselves from federal law enforcement for the very purpose of allowing communities to feel safe reporting crimes and assisting in investigations. This feeling of safety would automatically disappear if local police became deportation agents. Immigrant communities, at least the ones who don't already, will live in fear of the police rather than see them as a beacon of safety. The International Association of Chiefs of Police as well as over 50 local police departments have come out with official statements rejecting this type of proposal.

Sure, there are some local politicians who are in favor of this type of local enforcement. These local politicians want to take on the traditional role of the federal government and attempt to seal their own local borders. One probable effect of such a patchwork of enforcement would be to increase the incoherency of an already chaotic and complex system.

This provision is yet another example of an election-year antic to stir up the anti-immigrant vote. Not only will it be useless in fixing our country's broken immigration system, but it will make our communities less safe by forcing immigrants back into the shadows in fear of deportation. The federal government should step up to the plate and pass comprehensive reform -and stop passing their own responsibility on to unwilling local police departments.

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Posted at 11:04 AM, Oct 04, 2006 in Immigration
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