Council Seeks to Limit INS Presence at LAPD Stations

Pushed to take a stronger stance on immigrant rights as a result of the Rampart corruption scandal, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday unanimously asked the Police Commission to bar the routine presence of the Immigration and Naturalization Service at LAPD stations.

The council asked that the commission instruct the department to permit INS or Border Patrol agents into police stations only if they are working on specific federal investigations. In all instances, the city lawmakers agreed, the federal agents should have the explicit permission of the station’s commanding officer to enter a Los Angeles Police Department facility.

The vote comes in the wake of allegations that INS agents were a constant presence at the Rampart station and worked with officers there seeking the deportation of alleged gang members against whom criminal cases could not be made.

The actions of the INS and the police, The Times has reported, led to numerous violations of a 21-year-old city policy--called Special Order 40--that prohibits the LAPD from initiating police action to determine whether people are legally in the United States.

Attempting to regain the confidence of the city’s immigrant communities, the council Wednesday also called for the Police Commission to reaffirm its support of Special Order 40 and to take steps to make sure that officers are not violating the policy. The commission is expected to consider the council’s request in the next few weeks.

“It’s pretty hard not to understand the implications of [violating the rule],” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who introduced the motion calling for the council action. “If people are afraid, they are not going to come forward to report crimes. End of story.”

Goldberg’s motion also directs the Police Commission to convene a task force--composed of representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and a variety of immigrant rights organizations--to conduct a study of all of the LAPD’s interactions with the INS.

“It’s a sad day [when] we have to stand here and make this kind of statement,” Councilman Mike Hernandez said of the council decision. “The Police Department is no different than anyone else--they don’t have the right to ask someone their immigration status.”

The council adopted Special Order 40 in 1979 after a lawsuit challenged the LAPD’s practice of routinely detaining suspected illegal immigrants without bringing criminal charges, and transporting them to the INS for arrest based on the suspicion of noncriminal violations of federal immigration laws.

Under the city’s policy, LAPD officers are prevented from initiating police action with the objective of discovering a person’s immigration status. However, they can notify the INS when they have booked an illegal immigrant on suspicion of felonies, multiple misdemeanors or a “high-grade” misdemeanor.

In recent years, there has been much discussion on whether the rule should be made less restrictive. After a 1996 series in The Times on the 18th Street gang, the council’s Public Safety Committee asked the LAPD to determine if changes in the policy would help police better combat street gang crime.

After a six-month review of the matter, department officials concluded that any policy change would be unwise. Despite the LAPD’s support of the policy, however, there were still widespread violations of the rule among some of the officers, sources said.

An INS memo, obtained by The Times, stated that alleged gang members arrested as part of a joint task force by the LAPD, FBI and the INS were referred to the INS’ Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, which arranged the deportation or prosecution of 200 people accused of immigration offenses in 1997 and 1998. Some of the arrests were made by the Rampart anti-gang unit whose members now are at the center of the largest scandal in LAPD history.

Members of the Central American Resource Center--who spoke out in support of the council action Wednesday--say LAPD officers have played key roles in the deportation of more than 160 people recently.

Councilwoman Rita Walters said the violation of the special order “is the kind of thing we’ve come to expect from totalitarian governments.”

“We are guilty of transgressing on human rights when we allow INS agents to be in the police stations of our city,” she said.