April 4, 2002
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Ruling Clears Way to Use State Police in Immigration Duty
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, April 3 -- A Justice Department legal ruling clears the way for Attorney General John Ashcroft to declare that state and local police departments have the power to enforce federal immigration laws, officials said today.

While a final decision has not been reached to make such a declaration, the move is seen as a way to promote a federal plan to deputize local police officers as agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, allowing them to make an arrest solely for overstaying a visa or entering the country illegally.

If adopted as policy, the opinion by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel would encourage local police departments to embrace a plan that many have resisted in the past as hindering crime fighting but are now reconsidering in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The immigration service, which has long focused its enforcement effort at the nation's borders, has fewer than 2,000 agents assigned to internal enforcement, but it estimates that more than eight million people live in the United States illegally.

"This would leverage a small number of federal law enforcement officers with much, much larger numbers of state and local police officers," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter limits on immigration.

The Justice Department's legal opinion was first reported today by the Copley News Service.

A wide-ranging 1996 immigration law authorized the attorney general to enter into agreements with states and local governments permitting them to enforce the immigration laws on a routine basis.

Until recently, only a few places pursued such agreements, and all were blocked by opposition from immigrant advocates and employers or, in some places like New York City, by ordinances that prohibited local police officers from arresting otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants.

That trend has started to shift after the September attacks, law enforcement officials say. Florida will soon become the first jurisdiction to enter into a policing partnership with the Justice Department, the immigration service's parent. Officials in South Carolina have also expressed interest in participating.

All 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were foreign-born men living in the United States on temporary visas, and at least two were in violation of their visa conditions.

Other jurisdictions, including Salt Lake City in 1998, dropped the idea after strong opposition from Latino organizations and civil rights groups.

Justice Department officials refused to discuss details of the legal counsel's opinion or how Mr. Ashcroft intended to proceed.

In a statement tonight, the Justice Department said many state and local law enforcement agencies had asked the department to review a 1996 opinion by its legal counsel's office that precluded "state and local law enforcement agencies from making arrests for civil violations of immigration law."

Immigrant advocates criticized the latest proposal, saying it would hurt police officers' ability to gain trust in immigrant communities.

"If the Justice Department is going to give the green light to local law enforcement to cooperate with the I.N.S., it'll jeopardize the efforts of local police to build relations with local communities," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. "It's a classic post-Sept. 11 Justice Department move. They want to improve security, but they're driving away the very people who can provide help to law enforcement."

The 1996 law required training for local police officers in the complexities of immigration law. But immigration lawyers voiced concern that such training would not adequately prepare officers trained in criminal procedures. They also expressed fears that the Justice Department proposal would give rise to additional cases of racial profiling by the authorities.

"They'd be taking experts in apprehending criminals and using them to trace civil violations," said Roxana Bacon, an immigration lawyer in Phoenix.

Because any partnerships between the Justice Department and local law enforcement agencies would be voluntary, the plan would not violate constitutional protections, legal experts said.

While perhaps legally sound, deputizing large numbers of local police officers as federal agents poses practical and symbolic challenges, these experts said.

"The specter of a national police force has sent people skittering away from such proposals in the past," said Mary Cheh, a professor of criminal procedure and constitutional law at George Washington University.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

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