Police Want No Part in Enforcing Immigration

In a post-Sept. 11 world, it seems a most logical proposal: Why not let state and local police help the obviously overwhelmed federal government find and deport illegal immigrants?

But the Justice Department idea floated this week has already run into fierce opposition--from immigrant advocates and law enforcement agencies in California and elsewhere.

The plan, still preliminary, could result in greater leeway for state and local officers in enforcing immigration laws. Yet many officers are definitively saying, “No thanks.”

“We already have enough to do,” said Dave Cohen, a spokesman for the San Diego Police Department. The same sentiments were echoed among police officials in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

The debate pits heightened terrorism concerns against long-entrenched arguments linked to civil liberties, the nation’s history as a haven for immigrants and refugees, and the importance of large-scale immigration to the United States’ economy.

Officials say three of the 19 Sept11 hijackers were in the country illegally. One of the presumed core plotters--Nawaf Alhazmi, a Saudi national and former San Diego resident who helped crash a jet into the Pentagon--received a speeding ticket in Oklahoma, but his expired visa went unnoticed as the state police officer recorded his California driver’s license.

Why, many ask, should local police maintain a hands-off policy toward immigration-law violators? Especially at a time when the Immigration and Naturalization Service, with 2,000 agents in the nation’s interior, clearly cannot handle an illegal immigrant population now believed to have soared past 8million?

“Taxpayers have a reasonable expectation of cooperation--close cooperation--between every level of enforcement in our government,” said Bill King, a former Border Patrol sector chief and top INS official in California, who is retired. “Take a look at L.A.: It’s the illegal alien capital of the country. And they certainly don’t have enough resources in the INS to do the job.”

That’s not the way things are viewed at LAPD headquarters, where the notion of enforcing immigration statutes was greeted like the arrival of an unpleasant in-law.

“Because of our immigrant population here and our diverse communities, we don’t want to alienate anybody, or give anybody any fear,” said Sgt. John Pasquariello, an LAPD spokesman. “That’s just not our policy. Hasn’t been for 20 years.”

It was in Los Angeles, capital of the current wave of immigration that took off in the 1970s, that the issue of local police and immigration policy first came into intense focus.

The rapid demographic shifts convinced former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates--hardly a misty-eyed liberal--that it was time for officers to get out of the immigration business.

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A Touchstone of Law Enforcement

The result: Special Order 40, a trailblazing 1979 directive that generally prevents officers from quizzing people about their immigration status or turning otherwise law-abiding citizens over to the INS. The measure has become a touchstone of law enforcement here ever since, despite complaints that police frequently violate its terms and spirit.

New York, San Francisco, Chicago and other cities followed with similar policies.

Underlying this philosophy is a fundamental policing goal: to encourage new arrivals who may not speak English--many from homelands where police were feared as thieves or torturers--to come forward and report crimes, either as victims or witnesses.

But advocates of stricter immigration controls argue that now priority must be given to averting infiltration by foreign malefactors.

“Given the ... federal government’s inability to locate suspected terrorists within our borders, there can be no justification for not providing local law enforcement with the training they need to help in this effort,’” said Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who heads a congressional group favoring cuts in immigration.

People who share Tancredo’s views have long tried to bring local police into the immigration fight. In a similar vein, the authors of Proposition 187, the successful 1994 California ballot initiative later largely struck down by a federal judge, included a provision requiring state and local police officers to turn in suspected illegal immigrants to the INS.

Inspired by the California measure, Congress in 1996 authorized the deputizing of state and local police to enforce immigration law. The INS devised a training regimen, but the response was tepid. Only officials in Salt Lake City responded seriously; civil rights and Latino activists in Utah successfully fought back the plan.

Meantime, the late 1990s economic boom served to reduce opposition to immigration, as both major parties wooed the growing numbers of Latino voters.

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September Attacks Have Revived Interest

But officials say Sept. 11 has led to revived interest in enhanced cooperation between local police and the INS. That is what prompted the Justice Department to declare this week that it was reviewing an internal legal opinion that bars state and local authorities from making arrests for civil violations of immigration law, such as being in the country illegally.

Opponents say immigration dragnets by local police would be counterproductive to fighting terrorism, forcing people deeper underground and leaving police less time to combat violent crime. Critics immediately cited a likely wave of racial profiling.

“This would overburden local police, and you wouldn’t get any of the anti-terrorism targeting that you want,” said Robert Bach, a former high-ranking INS official in the Clinton administration. “It’s a back door to bad immigration enforcement.”

Wrong, said King, the 35-year INS veteran. “It would help get rid of illegal aliens, because any cop can identify an illegal alien in two seconds flat. They’re breaking the law and nobody’s doing anything about it.”

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Times staff writers Tony Perry in San Diego and Jonathan Peterson in Washington contributed to this report.