Policing illegal immigrants

De Martins was living the good life. Seven years after arriving in Monmouth County as a 15-year-old tourist from Brazil, he had steady roofing work, a wife and a baby on the way.

But when his younger sister hinted she might follow him to the United States, with help from smugglers, he sternly warned her off. He thought she'd heeded his advice - until last August, when she called in a panic. She was already in New Jersey, and the smugglers who'd brought her were threatening to keep her captive if he didn't pay $10,000 ransom.

On his tip, West Long Branch officers moved in on a Home Depot parking lot and seized two smugglers and a van full of hostages, including the sister. It seemed a superb example of citizen/police collaboration. But then the police turned their attention to Martins - and his immigration status. He admitted overstaying his visa. To his shock, local officers turned him over to immigration officials. Martins, 23, now faces deportation.

Martins' lawyer is scornful of the West Long Branch police. "I'm going to give you information, I'm going to help you find people, you are going to arrest them, I'm going to save people's lives and then I'm going to be deported?" says Rex Chen. "That's idiotic."

What seems idiotic to Chen might strike others as patriotic. Local law officers in New Jersey and elsewhere in the nation are finding themselves buffeted by two powerful forces: tougher federal security measures to stave off terrorism and a growing flood of illegal immigrants from Latin America, most of whom merely want to trade hard labor for a better life.

In similar predicaments to that faced by West Long Branch police, local officers around the country last year contacted federal authorities about immigrants' legal status 670,000 times. But anecdotal evidence indicates some mayors and police chiefs are dealing with immigration violations by looking the other way. They reason that being in this country illegally is not a crime but a violation of U.S. civil laws -and a matter that should be left solely to the federal government.

Illegal immigration is at its highest level ever, accounting for an estimated 500,000 undocumented people in New Jersey and 11 million across the country. In a post-Sept. 11 world, concern about a population that lives under the radar is at a peak, and immigration agents are stepping up efforts to track down and deport illegal immigrants.

So towns are choosing sides. Some readily assist the federal government, alerting them to illegals in their midst. Others have rebelled, refusing to turn in residents who help make their community what it is: the church ushers, the landscapers, the PTA members, the busboys, the parents of American-born children.

In the last year, several New Jersey towns have found themselves on opposite sides of the divide:

"It's not our responsibility as local police to implement these Nazi-style actions in the United States and just go around taking people off the street who may be undocumented," says Hightstown Mayor Bob Patten. "Immigration is a federal, civil matter. It's not our role."

But Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett, a leading congressional proponent of tougher immigration laws and reduced benefits for illegal immigrants, sees it differently.

"All levels of government have an obligation to point out if they see anyone breaking any law, including immigration, and report it," Garrett says.

The police chief of New Ipswich, N.H., has begun charging illegal immigrants with trespass, explaining he is fed up with immigration agents who won't respond to calls about the flood of new arrivals.

As Chief W. Garrett Chamberlain told a newspaper reporter, "I'm just saying, wait a minute. We're on heightened alert and it's post-9/11, and I'm going to let an illegal immigrant I don't know from Adam just walk away?"

In Arizona, where frustration that federal authorities aren't doing enough to rein in illegal immigration fueled the recent Minutemen border watches, the Legislature recently tried to give local and state police more power to arrest undocumented immigrants. The bill was vetoed because it provided no funds for the extra duties.

Some New Jersey officials also want the federal laws enforced by all levels of government. They see illegal immigration as everyone's business - and note that the failure of federal agencies to share crucial intelligence was a prime reason why the government did not foil the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"I would hope that we've learned from that that everyone should help each other out and work collaboratively when they come across a violation of law," Garrett says.

In Hightstown, however, the mayor and police chief say they want illegal immigrants to realize that municipal employees, including the police, are there to serve them. In a speech at the borough's annual reorganization meeting Jan. 1, Patten said making illegal immigrants feel at ease would be a top priority.

"You have to take care of all the people in your community," Patten says. "Politically, it may not be the best thing to do, to talk like this. But I don't fear that. My position is to try to ensure that everyone can reach the American dream."

The controversy has flared in Central Jersey over the last year, as some local police have assisted immigration agents in pre-dawn raids at the homes of immigrants who have ignored deportation orders.

Immigration attorneys and advocates say they are encountering increasing numbers of illegal immigrants arrested on tips from local officials, most frequently local police.

"Police have a lot of discretionary power," says David Abalos, a professor at Seton Hall University and the author of several books about Latino immigrants. "Sometimes they disregard the fact that as soon as people come, even without documents, they are protected by laws of the U.S. Constitution. These people are not a threat to our national security."

Chen, who is working on Martins' case with the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Newark, is appealing the deportation order. He says the West Long Branch police, in trying to enforce immigration laws, overstepped their bounds and ignored Martins' basic rights to not incriminate himself and to obtain legal counsel.

"By calling him in to the police station and interrogating him in a room ... the police coerced him into answering their questions," Chen says. "[He] was not freely volunteering information."

Chen insists such actions will discourage illegal immigrants from coming forward with crime tips.

"I can understand why immigration is going after the smugglers, I can even understand why immigration is going after the people in the van," he says. "But why are they going after the guy who called the police for help, and successfully got two people arrested and rescued the people in the van?"

Lt. Lawrence Mihlon, a spokesman for the West Long Branch police, says officers meant no harm to Martins when they called the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, to alert them to the smugglers.

"We're not dealing with shoplifting, with someone taking a pack of M&Ms from Kmart and you call immigration," he says. "We called because of the nature of what he called about - illegal aliens - and because it's their jurisdiction. But we did not contact them in any way to encroach on somebody's civil liberties."

Immigration authorities say they cannot overlook a person's illegal status, even when that person has given them a valuable tip.

"We have to enforce our immigration laws," says Ernestine Fobbs, an ICE spokeswoman in Washington, D.C. "We have to maintain the integrity of our immigration system."

But the federal response has disappointed local officials in some towns where the swelling migrant population has raised tensions and fears - and hopes that the feds would come in and make clean sweeps.

In Freehold and Fairview, for example, pleas to immigration agents to come round up day laborers in recent years were rejected by Homeland Security Department authorities who said they had more pressing tasks: pursuing and detaining possible terrorists and criminals.

So overwhelmed towns are trying to oust illegal immigrants in other ways. Some are using local ordinances to get migrants off the streets, if not out of town.

From time to time, Palisades Park tries to banish the crowds of laborers who stand on its corners by targeting the contractors who hire them. Police have ticketed contractors for such things as soliciting or having passengers in their vehicles who aren't wearing seat belts.

In 2002, Fairview tried to keep the children of one illegal immigrant family out of school, but lost a court challenge.

Other towns favor the Hightstown approach, saying that undocumented residents should be treated as members of their communities and that keeping illegal immigrants on the margins imperils everyone.

As more and more immigrants flock to New Jersey, police are trying to persuade them to come forward with information about crimes. They attend ethnic gatherings and post foreign-language fliers urging immigrants not to be afraid to approach police. East Windsor even requires police officers to study Spanish.

Hightstown police say that since they began reaching out to illegal residents, more women have come forward to report domestic violence.

Princeton's Borough Council, already committed to making all immigrants feel comfortable dealing with police and other agencies without fearing deportation, plans to draft an ordinance outlining circumstances under which local officials would cooperate with immigration authorities. The council has asked the state attorney general for guidance on the ordinance.

Washington's interest in local cooperation with immigration enforcement waxes and wanes with politics and events.

In 1996, as part of a sweeping immigration reform package, Congress allowed - but did not obligate - local authorities to arrest illegal immigrants and turn them over to federal authorities. At the same time, the Justice Department took a stance that local police were limited to criminal arrests and lacked authority to enforce civil violations, such as overstaying a visa.

Since 9/11, however, the Justice Department has supported broader local authority to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, in Long Branch, Martins is taking his case to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Clad in jeans, a T-shirt and a baseball cap on a recent day in a local diner, the lanky immigrant spoke about how the United States is home. It's where he met his wife, also a Brazilian, and where he came of age.

But he still cannot understand how doing what he thought was right - calling 911 to report smuggling and a sister in peril - has brought him face-to-face with deportation.

"I kept saying, 'What am I going to do now?'Ÿ" he explains. "If I didn't have the money to pay them, they were goingafter me or they were going to dothing to my sister.

"So the only thing that came to my mind was to call the police. I had no choice."

"What would you tell a friend in a similar situation?" Chen asks Martins. "If you had immigrant friends who were considering calling the police, what would you tell them?"

"I would tell them," Martins says, without missing a beat, "to shut their mouths."

---"It's not our responsibility as local police to implement these Nazi-style actions in the United States and just go around taking people off the street who may be undocumented," says Hightstown Mayor Bob Patten. "Immigration is a federal, civil matter. It's not our role."---

Attention illegals! Highstown is a safe haven for you from the evil Feds. Come one! Come all!

It's not our responsibility as local police to implement these Nazi-style actions in the United States and just go around taking people off the street who may be undocumented," says Hightstown Mayor Bob Patten. "Immigration is a federal, civil matter. It's not our role."

I'll bet this fine mayor's attitude would change quickly if he or a member of his family were victims of a crime perpetrated by an illegal.

Illegal immigrants are more likely to be criminals(in addition to illegal immigrants) than the average man on the street. The police are out there to protect us and that means getting the illegals out of the country. It is about time that the police started turning them in.
Every method needs to be used. Housing ordances, business licensing, vagrancy, sleeping in public places..etc..etc..zero tolerance.

This little article is just laying the groundwork for the de facto amnesties that now exist in sanctuary cities.

The standard line from La Raza / LULAC / MALDEF / MEChA is "the local police must not enforce eeemeeegration laws because that would scare the poor little eeemeeegrants from calling la policia when something bad happens".

They know damn good and well that 30 years ago, local cops were the primary enforcers - because there are a lot more of them, and they see most everyone in their cities.

So that's all this little propaganda piece is - a little softening up of the body politic, in preparation for the inevitable calls for "sanctuary".

a 15-year-old tourist from Brazil, he had steady roofing work, a wife and a baby on the way.

Only 15 years old, and already crankin' out the kidz. Great.

Wonder what cereal box this guy got his law degree from. So if you lead police to bank robbers, and the police find out you committed a bank robbery years before, you get a pass? Any lawyer who thinks like this should be disbarred. The fact that he's so willing to say something this stupid in public says a lot about modern society.

"What would you tell a friend in a similar situation?" Chen asks Martins. "If you had immigrant friends who were considering calling the police, what would you tell them?"

I would tell them not to come here in the first place. And stop having kids when you're 15 years old.

You know, it's quite funny that communities rely on the federal government for financial assistance, but refuse to accept responsibility for enforcing immigration laws because it's a federal job. When enough communities see the effect of this invasion, the public will demand that any law enforcement agency do sometning about it.
Unfortunately, by the time the American public revolts, we'll have 25,000,000 or so illegals here and it will be a nightmare to pack them out.

Only 15 years old, and already crankin' out the kidz. Great.

"Seven years after arriving in Monmouth County as a 15-year-old tourist from Brazil, he had steady roofing work, a wife and a baby on the way."

Don't you love people who have no math skills to go with their lack of reading comprehension?

That's often why illegals find it so easy to find work.

NJ currently has more foreign born residents than in any other time in the history of this continent. From my view, I don't see there ever being the political will in NJ to have local police enforce immigration law in the urban and old suburban areas. W Long Branch, and areas where the political and LEO power is still controlled by caucasians, are attempting to keep their neighborhoods the same ethnic make up as decades past. It keeps property prices, school systems, social services, medical services etc to much higher standards.

It also exposes the fallacy that the NJ Democrat party gives a rat's ass about immigrants in NJ. Immigrants are great workers and cheap replacements for native born wage workers, but they better not try to live in your neighborhood.

It seems the whole government is staffed with liars:

"We have to enforce our immigration laws," says Ernestine Fobbs, an ICE spokeswoman in Washington, D.C. "We have to maintain the integrity of our immigration system."

I suggest she explain why ICE refuses to pick up illegal aliens detained by the PA State Police after traffic stops or accidents.

I do think there should be a way for people like this to be allowed to stay -- no criminal record and self-sufficient -- with a five year probation prior to applying for naturalization. But I also want the 14^th Amendment revised -- we no longer have slaves to worry about for citizenship, so the 'anchor baby' position needs to be eliminated.

The 'Rats only want 'useful idiots' -- as they prove with every utterance from their leadership and fellow travellers in the DSA/USA and World International.

Oops. What can I say - it was late and I was tired. My math and reading skills are usually just fine, thanks, but this time ya got me bang to rights.

As for the rest of what I posted, I still stand by it...unless you care to do further proofreading for me, but I imagine you have other things to keep you occupied. Thanks!

On his tip...officers moved in on a Home Depot parking lot and seized two smugglers and a van full of hostages, including the sister. It seemed a superb example of citizen/police collaboration. Collaboration? The cops were bailing his butt out.

Imagine: I rob a liquor store for 200 bucks, only to be mugged at knife point two blocks from my crib. I yell "HELP" and a cop arrives, nabs the bad guy and lets me go?

Crying "HELP" is not a tip, and it is not collaboration.

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