Editorial: City cops aren't border cops
November 14, 2008
One idea that keeps coming back is the proposal to turn local police into immigration officers — to pursue and arrest illegal aliens. That’s a bad idea on many dimensions.
Written by Editorial, The El Paso Times
With pre-filing of bills for the upcoming Texas Legislature comes the usual lineup of smelly socks.
Discarded two years ago, and two years before that, they’re back, and pungent as ever.
One idea that keeps coming back is the proposal to turn local police into immigration officers — to pursue and arrest illegal aliens.
That’s a bad idea on many dimensions. Here are three:
* Strained manpower — We want our police dealing with public safety — traffic enforcement, investigation, neighborhood outreach. We don’t want them stretched doing what is a federal function: identifying and apprehending undocumented individuals.
* Cooperation — When public safety is in jeopardy, we want people to feel free to contact police. If noncitizens are afraid to do that, giant gaps will loom in the networking needed by police to keep the community safe.
* Acts of desperation — If an undocumented person thinks he’s facing deportation in a routine police encounter, it could turn violent.
A bill by state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, creates the state offense of criminal trespass for any illegal alien who’s on the wrong side of the border. This is posed in terms of flexibility — permitting the arrest of undocumented individuals. But it really offers police no choice.
The federal government must do a better job of making borders matter. But expecting local police to be an extension of the Immigration and Naturalization Service is wrong-headed and dangerous.
Police should cooperate with the INS and with regional immigration enforcement efforts under the federal ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — program.
Efforts have been encouraging this year, with deportations in Texas up 21 percent this year, matching an increase nationally.
Nationally, the government has removed nearly 350,000 people, nearly double the total four years ago.
Congress continues to punt on the opportunity to approve a comprehensive reform of immigration laws, which need some offer of amnesty to some of the estimated 11 million to 12 million people in the U.S. illegally.
Federal law needs a way to help address labor shortages with an improved guest worker program.
Making police immigration enforcement officers isn’t the way to approach this. Neither are prohibitions on renting property or otherwise serving illegal immigrants.
The responsibility for enforcing our borders resides with the federal government. The responsibility of keeping the peace in each community is enough to ask of police.
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