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Civil rights lawyers Thursday praised a federal appeals ruling requiring the Department of Justice to sharea secret document showing why the federal government concluded local police officers can enforce federal immigration laws.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday said the April 2002 report must be turned over to civil rights lawyers after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and his representatives repeatedly cited it to justify their decision to let local police have more authority (to arrest illegal aliens).
This sounds like good news up here in New England. We have one local police chief in New Hampshire being harrassed by the ACLU for arresting illegals for trespassing. He tried to get ICE to take them, but they didn't want to be bothered, so this was the next best thing.
Nov 1999 - In October, the Supreme Court refused to heal an appeal of a landmark decision by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which confirms that state and local police officers are free to arrest illegal aliens to the full extent permitted by their state law.
"This decision puts to rest any question local governments have about their authority to join the federal government in the fight against illegal immigration," commented Dan stein, executive director of FAIR.
Finding that local police have a general authority to enforce federal law and that recent laws have made clear Congress’s intent to allow them to help fight illegal immigration, the 10th Circuit decision (U.S. v. Ontoniel Vasquez-Alvarez) strikes down the myth that local police are powerless to arrest illegal aliens. "States could still pass laws that would forbid their pollice from enforcing immigration laws," noted Mike Hethmon, FAIR's staff attorney, "but they would have to go out of their way to do so."
Some communities have been frustrated in their recent attempts to have the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) empower their police against illegal immigration under 'Section 133' a provision of the 1996 immigration law. But the new court decision should make the INS's permission unnecessary. According to the 10th Circuit decision, local and state police officers can, with ‘probable cause,’ investigate and arrest people suspected of federal immigration crimes, including illegal entry, illegal presence, smuggling, harboring, or transporting illegal aliens, use of false documents or lying about their immigration status.
So you may want to can the snide GW/Ashcroft comments.
Could be!
This is good news. NOW if we can get the cities to enforce it!