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Our local police officers work in communities to serve and protect, not to waste time and money memorizing and enforcing our nation's complex immigration laws. Forcing immigration enforcement responsibilities on local and state agencies risks creating greater divisions between immigrant communities and the police who work with them.
The CLEAR Act of 2003 would require local law enforcement to "investigate, apprehend or remove aliens." States that don't cooperate will lose federal money used for keeping the offenders in jail, according to the bill, which was introduced last year in the House and now is sitting in committee. Florida netted $162-million from these funds between 1997 and 2003.
The bill is designed to help find and deport about 80,000 illegal immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes and released back into the community. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., says these immigrant offenders are evading justice because only 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are looking for 400,000 illegal immigrants. That's a serious problem, but making local police responsible for such searches is not the solution.
Local law enforcement is already doing its primary job - that's how these 80,000 criminals got records in the first place. The problem is that these immigrant criminals are cycled back into society because the federal ICE agents can't manage to find and target them for deportation upon their release.
The CLEAR Act would provide $2.5-billion to fund extra training and hire more local officers to enforce immigration laws. Why not send this extra $2.5-billion to ICE? After all, ICE was established and equipped to deal with just these types of cases. If it's understaffed, then we should fund additional positions before training other agencies to do the job ICE was designed to do.
Local law enforcement officials say they need an open-door policy with people in the immigrant community if officers are to battle issues such as human trafficking and abusive work environments. This trust is tested when people in the immigrant community see local police officers being used to send their neighbors to jail and then out of the country.
Local law enforcement officials, including Clearwater police Chief Sid Klein and Hillsborough Sheriff Cal Henderson, recently expressed concern about taking on the added responsibility of immigration law enforcement. The Sheriff's Department in Chandler, Ariz., learned in the late 1990s the perils of enforcing these laws. The department damaged its relationship with the immigrant community during a five-day community sweep in July 1997 aimed at jailing illegal immigrants. The backlash cost the city $705,000 including lawyers' and investigators' fees, and the city changed policy to prohibit city police from doing the job of federal immigration officials. Local police already have more to do than they can handle.