States, Counties Begin to Enforce Immigration Law
States, Counties Begin to Enforce Immigration Law
WHAT A CONCEPT!
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 27, 2006; A01
CHARLOTTE — Police here operated for years under what amounts to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward illegal immigrants.
As elsewhere in the United States, law enforcement officers did not check the immigration status of people they came into contact with, and in the vast majority of cases, a run-in with the law carried little threat of deportation.
But that accommodation for the burgeoning illegal population ended abruptly in April, when the Mecklenburg County sheriff’s office began to enforce immigration law, placing more than 100 people a month into deportation proceedings. Some of them had been charged with violent crimes, others with traffic infractions.
The program takes one of the most aggressive stances in the United States toward illegal immigrants, and officials in scores of communities, including Herndon and Loudoun County, are considering adopting their own version. The House earlier this month was weighing a measure “reaffirming” the authority of local law enforcement agencies to arrest people on suspicion of violating immigration laws.
Some Latino leaders say the program here is contributing to a discriminatory climate in which Hispanic drivers feel as if they are being “hunted” by police. And some law enforcement agencies elsewhere have rejected that enforcement function, saying such programs would rupture any trust that agencies have developed in Latino neighborhoods.
But advocates see it as a way to catch illegal immigrants who slip through the porous federal enforcement measures but run afoul of state or local police.
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph says there should be little sympathy for illegal immigrants caught by his program: They have already broken the law once by being here illegally, and then been arrested on suspicion of another crime.
“When any of them cross that border without proper documentation, they’ve violated the law — however insignificant it may seem to some people,” he said. “I’ve heard sad stories about folks wanting to come up here and have a better life and earn money for their family. I’ve arrested bank robbers who’ve had the same excuse.”