Bill would turn police into immigration agents, granting them the power to arrest Americans they suspect are here illegally
Washington, D. C. - A Republican proposal to deputize local police as immigration agents would improve public safety, law enforcement officials said Thursday.
But Democrats said it would reopen the fractious debate over whether states can be trusted to investigate a person's citizenship status without engaging in racial profiling.
Those contrasting opinions were the focus of a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday about the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement Act sponsored by Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.
Gowdy's bill is one of several House Republican proposals designed to create a stricter version of immigration reform than a bill under debate in the Senate.
Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, endorsed Gowdy's bill as protection against a repeat of the 1986 immigration law that granted legal status to 3 million illegal immigrants but failed to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Not only does the bill strengthen immigration enforcement by giving the federal government the tools it needs to enforce our laws, but it also ensures that where the federal government fails to act, states can pick up the slack," said Goodlatte.
Gowdy's bill would permit states to pass their own immigration laws and would give money to local law enforcement for extra training and resources they would need to prosecute immigration violations. It would punish cities or counties that refuse to help enforce federal immigration law by denying them federal law enforcement grants.
An attorney for the National Immigration Law Center testified against Gowdy's proposal.
Expanding the role of state and local law enforcement in immigration enforcement would "create an environment of rampant racial profiling and unlawful discrimination and breed distrust of law enforcement, which decreases public safety," said Karen Tumlin, managing attorney with the nonpartisan organization that advocates for low-income immigrants and their families.
The legislation also would expand the federal program that allows local law enforcement to enter cooperative agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws. Gowdy's bill would bar the Department of Homeland Security from refusing requests to enter such agreements.
The bill would cost taxpayers. In addition to the grants to local and state law enforcement, it calls for increasing space used to detain illegal immigrants and would add 2,500 ICE detention enforcement officers, 60 ICE attorneys, 5,000 deportation officers, and 700 support staff.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/13/house-immigration-debate/2421329/