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From The Courier-Post Online:
State AG broadens officers' power over illegal immigrants
Thursday, August 23, 2007
By: TOM BALDWIN - Gannett, New Jersey
TRENTON - New Jersey's attorney general told the state's police officers Wednesday to alert federal authorities when a suspected illegal immigrant is arrested for an indictable crime or drunken driving. More than one in six people living in New Jersey were born outside the United States, and there are an estimated 380,000 people living here without proper documents. That has caused tension in some communities, and those feelings boiled over when an illegal immigrant with an arrest record was charged in recent schoolyard killings in Newark.
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MEL EVANS/Associated Press
State Attorney General Anne Milgram on Wednesday ordered local police to notify immigration officials when an illegal immigrant is arrested. |
"When cops are on the street, I want them acting like local, county or state police," said Attorney General Anne Milgram in announcing, with U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie, that those police will now present more serious cases directly to the federal Immigration Customs Enforcement, or ICE. "You want to make sure the federal government knows and the county or local prosecutor know because it's relevant to bail considerations," Milgram said. When police suspect an arrestee may be an undocumented immigrant, the arresting agency must tell federal immigration officials, the county prosecutor and judiciary, Milgram's order says.
That brought joy to Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello, who has been trying to have his police assume some powers of federal immigration officers. "It is an acknowledgment of what I have been saying all along. Morristown has a right to do this," Cresitello said. Milgram pointed to the back-of-the-head, gunshot executions of three college students Aug. 4. A fourth student survived. One of the six suspects arrested in the killings was illegal immigrant Jose Carranza, 28, who had been out on bail after a bar fight and allegedly molesting a child. The status of other people accused in the case isn't clear. Federal authorities had never been alerted to Carranza's arrests.
Until now, police used discretion on when to alert federal immigration officers. "What happened in Newark was a tremendous tragedy," said Milgram. Police officially deny the deaths were gang slayings, though a well-placed source told Gannett New Jersey there was evidence of trademark body mutilation that linked the executions to "MS-13," a particularly ruthless Hispanic gang rooted in El Salvador. The name is believed to come from a variety of threads in Salvadoran history and Salvadorans who settled on the West Coast. The Newark executions scarred a city trying to emerge from a history of violence dating to 1967 race riots. And angry voices asked why local authorities had not pushed Carranza's name to the federal level.
Shai Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, said a need exists to address illegal immigrants, but warned, "There are concerns this could lapse into racial profiling. This could lapse into abuses." "A person's race or ethnicity cannot be a factor," said Milgram, noting her department will monitor the program for abuses, such as cops piling on charges to break the threshold of "indictable offense" and shoot the suspect's name to ICE. Milgram also said New Jersey communities can apply to ICE to train and then essentially deputize local or county police officers to behave as federal immigration officers -- and to house the suspects -- if they arrest a suspected illegal immigrant for an indictable offense or for DWI. That is what Morristown's mayor sought. Milgram stressed police are not allowed to check the immigration status of victims of crime or accidents, or of witnesses. Milgram and Christie noted they did not want the new police powers to be another reason why someone -- legally in this country or not -- opts to not summon police or step forward as a witness.
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