The Associated Press
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Police along the U.S.-Mexico border will soon be able to enforce federal immigration laws, but Arizona’s governor and local law enforcement officials said they’re reluctant to have officers act as immigration agents.
Starting Aug. 23, if situations arise where public safety is jeopardized, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft will be able to ask local police agencies to help with immigration law enforcement.
But Gov. Jane Hull’s spokeswoman, Francie Noyes, said her boss has no intention of using state law enforcement officers to enforce immigration laws.
“She has believed all along that it is up to the federal government to beef up their forces on the border. That it is up to them to handle this,” Noyes said.
Critics, including Isabel Garcia of the Tucson-based group Derechos Humanos, say the circumstances in which police officers would be called to enforce immigration laws is vague and places too much authority in the hands of the attorney general, who announced the rules July 24.
“To now set about in a willy-nilly fashion to deputize local officers, giving them extraordinary powers without any real concern for issues like training, supervision and liability ... would be a major mistake and a major setback for those of us living in border states and other areas where there are people of color,” Garcia said.
The rule defining when local police agencies would be asked to enforce immigration laws has intentionally been left vague, said Ronald Dodson, a supervisory special agent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington, D.C.
“What this anticipates is that, in the event of a massive influx of aliens, local law enforcement resources may be necessary to augment what are very limited INS resources in a area,” Dodson said.
For the INS to ask local government to bear the cost of the federal government’s failure to perform its duty is absurd, Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever said.
The rules are the clearest acknowledgment to date that the “INS is either not willing or capable of doing their job,” he said.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said he is prepared to cooperate with federal agencies, but he won’t commit his officers to immigration enforcement effort.
“There has to be more than just enforcement and putting people along the border, there has to be some kind of long-range plan,” Estrada said.