Dole, sheriffs back immigration plan

Carolina Beach | U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., and many of the state sheriffs attending the N.C. Sheriffs' Association's fall meeting in Carolina Beach see a proposal to increase cooperation between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement as a way to boost safety and security.

"Where the rubber hits the road, we are going to make a difference," said Steve Bizzell, Johnston County sheriff and association president.

But others see it as a dangerous precedent that could easily mushroom into something much more sinister.

"It undermines the very principles of community policing and really creates a hostile environment, not just against illegal immigrants but against people who look like one," said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

Dole, the sheriffs and immigration officials talked Tuesday about ways of developing new partnerships and relationships to help weed out illegal immigrants among the state's criminal population.

Dole said she has received strong support to increase the "partnership and enforcement tools" available to local law-enforcement officials to tackle what she called a growing national problem.

She said that after the proposed

immigration bill fell apart in Washington earlier this year, Congress' phone lines crashed with people questioning the government's ability to secure its borders and calling for something to be done.

The United States has an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, 500,000 of them living in North Carolina.

Dole said a discussion with law-enforcement officials across North Carolina this summer also showed an eagerness to help out, specifically in finding and removing illegal immigrants in the state who had committed crimes.

"I think everyone would agree that we don't need that type of criminal in our jails," she said.

Officials at Tuesday's conference didn't have any immediate figures as to how many criminals in the state's jails might be illegal immigrants.

Echoing comments by Dole and others, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Roland Jones said the program's purpose wouldn't be to turn deputies and police officers into full-blown immigration officials taking part in raids and other dragnet operations.

But it would be used to leverage the existing immigration-enforcement tools, allowing more sets of eyes to catch criminal immigrants who have been self-identified by their illegal actions

The proposal would look to develop regional and statewide initiatives to determine the residency of individuals once they were in the hands of a cooperating law-enforcement agency.

Jones said that only the identities of illegal immigrants who are charged, not simply suspects in a case, would then be turned over to ICE officials.

Dole said the pilot program proposed for North Carolina, which would look to build on existing partnership programs between federal and local law enforcement, could become a model for other states.

"We have a real opportunity to start something special here," she said.

New Hanover County Sheriff Sid Causey said that while he thought the initiative had some promise, he also thought it needed work. He said the money offered by the federal government to potentially house illegal immigrants in local jails wasn't enough, and the program's parameters were still a bit murky.

But Causey said a bigger concern for him was how any increased cooperation between his department and immigration officials would be perceived by the county's growing immigrant community.

"If we started something like this, I'd want to first meet with members of the Latino community and tell them that we're not out there trying to pick up everyone or assist in raids, but to deal with the criminal element that's out there," Causey said, noting that law-abiding immigrants are probably more affected by criminal members of their community than anyone else. "I think it would be very important to get that message out there."

Some advocates for immigrants have said that Latinos, already often suspicious of law-enforcement officials, would balk at coming forward with information if they thought it could endanger their residency status.

The Brunswick County Sheriff's Department and the Wilmington Police Department are among 20 North Carolina law-enforcement agencies that have already applied to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, for grant funding to help them identify illegal immigrants.

Wilmington Deputy Chief David Conklin said he thought it was a good program because it would involve checking people the department was already arresting for breaking the law.

He said for anyone to think this would lead to city police officers actively applying immigration law was simply wrong.

"We don't have the time, the money or the people to do anything beyond something that's not relatively closely defined to what our role already is," Conklin said. "That problem is way beyond what we could have anything to do about."

Gareth McGrath: 343-2384

gareth.mcgrath@starnewsonline.com