The federal government will soon grant a group of Virginia State Police officers the power to enforce immigration law, making the state the third in the country to adopt the practice since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, local officials said.
The tentative agreement between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Virginia State Police, permissible under a 1996 law, is part of a movement across the country to grant local law enforcement officials more authority to detain illegal immigrants.
Proponents say the expanded powers will give police more tools to combat terrorism, gang violence and other crimes. But immigrant advocates counter that the practice could lead to ethnic profiling. And some police officials, including D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, are openly opposed to the idea and say it could discourage immigrants from reporting crimes.
The debate illustrates the complexity of improving security in a country that is home to an estimated 8 million or more illegal immigrants. Three of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks were part of that underground population, but so are millions of workers and families in communities across America. The Department of Homeland Security, which enforces immigration laws, acknowledges that it does not have enough agents to track down all those undocumented immigrants.
Virginia officials decided to seek extra immigration powers for some state police after participating in local and federal task forces on terrorism and gang violence.
"We had this recurring discussion about our inability at some times to deal with illegal immigrants when we were involved in other types of investigations," said Col. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of Virginia's state police. While the police had worked with federal immigration authorities over the years, he said, "their resources are limited as well. So you don't always have them available to you."
Until recently, local and state police could not make arrests on civil immigration violations, although they could detain immigrants for criminal offenses and sometimes helped federal immigration authorities with transportation or security.
But a provision of a 1996 law allows federal authorities to "deputize" local or state police to enforce immigration law. Flaherty said he and other officials discovered that two other states -- Florida and Alabama -- had sent dozens of state police officers to be trained in immigration enforcement under the federal program since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Virginia then contacted Homeland Security to do the same.
'The original motivation'
Michael J. Garcia, who oversees immigration enforcement for Homeland Security, said federal authorities were not urging state police to receive the training but were happy to provide it if asked. So far, he said, the program has worked well.
"If you look at our resources, we are limited. It's been, I think, helpful to have additional people out there who are skilled in it and who can do the enforcement" of immigration law, he said. "Obviously we watch to see that's being done appropriately."
Under the agreement being negotiated, about 50 Virginia state police would be able to enforce federal immigration law in addition to their other responsibilities, Flaherty said. The officers would be stationed throughout the state, with one attached to each of the 24 drug task forces in Virginia, he said. They would be under the supervision of federal authorities when carrying out immigration enforcement.
Flaherty said the officers, who may begin training as early as next month, would use their immigration authority only in special cases. "We're not going to plan any sweeps of illegal immigrants and whatnot. We just want this tool to use in other cases," he said.
In addition to participating in the Homeland Security program, Virginia recently passed a law that would permit state and local police to arrest immigrants who had been convicted of felonies and deported but returned illegally.
The sponsor of the House bill, Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), said that fighting terrorism was "the original motivation" for introducing the legislation but that it might ultimately be more useful in combating gang violence.
Both the new law and the Homeland Security program for state police will likely result in only a small number of arrests. But immigrant advocates are concerned that the measures could lead to officers mistakenly detaining people who are here legally.
"Quite frankly, immigration law is pretty complicated," said Judy Golub of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, noting that there are myriad visas and permits allowing people to stay in the country.
She pointed to a case that occurred in 1997, when immigration agents and local police arrested more than 400 people in Chandler, Ariz., in an operation targeting illegal immigrants. Some of those detained turned out to be legal residents. The Arizona attorney general's office later concluded that the sweep violated residents' civil rights, and the city settled two lawsuits for more than $500,000.
Jorge Figueredo, executive director of the Hispanic Committee of Virginia, a community-service organization based in Falls Church, said he was especially worried about the state law allowing police to arrest immigrant felons who had reentered the country after deportation.
"The most important question is, how are they going to do it?" he asked. "How are they going to know" who fits those qualifications?
Sharply divided
Albo agreed that the law would be difficult to enforce, noting that police cannot directly access the relevant immigration data because it is spread among various federal databases. But he said he hoped that police officers could eventually call up such data on the computers in their patrol cars, allowing them to enforce immigration law in the course of their work.
The Virginia law follows a legal tradition in which states could authorize their police to enforce criminal -- rather than civil -- immigration violations, said Bo Cooper, former general counsel of the immigration service who now works at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker. Such violations include reentering the country illegally after being deported.
The movement to expand police authority to combat illegal immigration goes beyond a handful of states.
In Congress, Rep. Charles Whitlow Norwood Jr. (R-Ga.) has introduced the Clear Act, which would give state and local law enforcement authorities the power to routinely enforce federal immigration laws. The bill has 120 co-sponsors; a similar measure has been introduced in the Senate.
Police and local officials nationwide have been sharply divided over the idea.
Ramsey called a news conference in July to affirm that District police would continue their longtime policy of not asking people about their immigration status unless they were suspected of crimes.
And Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) wrote to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) last fall to urge her to oppose the Clear Act.
"A troubling consequence of this legislation is that it could cause members of certain groups not to report crimes or to come forward with information about crimes for fear of being deported," he wrote.
Some authorities have also said that their police departments do not have the resources to take on immigration responsibilities.
"Nobody expects federal immigration officers to make drunken-driving stops, so they shouldn't expect local police to make federal immigration stops," said Duncan's spokesman, David Weaver.
