By Karen Lee Ziner
The Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A 27-member governor’s advisory panel charged with monitoring “unintended consequences” of Governor Carcieri’s executive order on illegal immigration met for the first time yesterday. Carcieri appointed the committee after his March order sparked protests by community leaders, advocacy groups, and some of the state’s top clerical leaders.
As the panel convened, immigration agents arrested 31 people — all believed to be maintenance workers — at six state courthouses, according to demonstrators who gathered outside the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Providence. The Rev. Jose Roberts, of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Central Falls, said an ICE agent at the office confirmed the number. Many of those arrested are employed by contractors hired by the state to clean the courthouses.
Yesterday’s meeting laid out the nuts and bolts of Carcieri’s six-point executive order, including a key directive that the state police and prison officials obtain special training through an ICE initiative known as 287(g).
Another directive, begun May 15, requires use of a federal E-Verify database to ensure new employees in the executive branch and workers for state vendors are legally authorized to work in the country.
The panel’s chairman, retired Rear Adm. Joseph Strausser, said, “Our job is to monitor, to see that people who are here legally are not disadvantaged in any way. That’s what we are here to do. If we know people who are disadvantaged, then we must report it.”
Once trained through the 287(g) initiative, some state troopers and corrections staff will be able to tap directly into an ICE database to determine whether a suspect is in the country illegally.
The training will also familiarize troopers and correctional staff with immigration and constitutional law, ethics, and racial profiling issues.
Col. Brendan Doherty, the state police superintendent, said, “I realize this is a sensitive issue and a passionate issue. From state police perspective I can tell you our troopers are highly trained in sensitivity, tolerance and respect and they incorporate that in how they deal with people along the highway,” or in other situations.
Doherty said state police will not be conducting immigration raids or sweeps. But he added, “I’ve taken a position that this is not a sanctuary state, and if we find someone who is here illegally or unlawfully, we will notify ICE.”
“What we try to avoid is the worst-case scenario … we’ve seen that in the last few months in a few cases in Rhode Island,” the colonel said. “We take a lot of pride in what we do, and I understand the issues that evolve from this. The troopers are compassionate, they do their job and they do it well.”
Carcieri acknowledged that increased interest by law enforcement agencies around the country has created a training backlog. According to ICE authorities, there is at least a one-year national backlog for training, and all applicants must first be approved.
The governor told the panel, “What I’m trying to accomplish with this, is that it’s a good thing for us to have a forum, if you will, for those concerns” to be explored when they surface.
He said advisory panel members “should direct instances of unintended consequences to two point persons,” panel chairman Strausser, and panel vice-chair Deborah A. Smith, of the governor’s office of external affairs.The Rev. Donald Anderson, executive director of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, is one of three members of the clergy who met with Carcieri, leading to the advisory panel.
Mr. Anderson called the meeting a “good start,” particularly for understanding the order’s scope.
“I was pleased to learn that there is no intent for state police to become immigration enforcers; that they’re not going to go out do to sweeps,” said Mr. Anderson. “In the absence of that clarification, I think people had some concerns … and should some overly zealous individual do that, there should be a forum to address that,” he added.
Copyright 2008 The Providence Journal