USA Today
PHOENIX — The Arizona agency tasked with training 15,000 law officers to enforce the state’s controversial new illegal immigration law has asked federal authorities for assistance, but administration officials say it is unclear whether the government will help.
Lyle Mann, executive director of the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, says federal assistance is “critical” to what he describes as an unprecedented effort to prepare officers as soon as this summer to enforce the law, which gives local police authority to identify and arrest illegal immigrants.
“Participation by federal authorities is critical in ascertaining how to implement a standard of enforcement,” says Mann, who made the request through the Department of Homeland Security’s division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
President Obama, however, has ordered a Justice Department review of the measure’s civil rights implications.
“That review,” DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler says, “will inform the government’s actions.”
Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., has urged the Obama administration “not to cooperate with the state of Arizona in its implementation and execution.” In a letter sent Friday to Obama, he called the law a “serious overstep of state authority in federal issues.”
The legislation, signed Friday by Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, requires police to “determine the immigration status of a person during any legitimate contact made by an official or agency of the state ... if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S.” There are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona, state records show.
Brewer and other supporters, including Joe Arpaio, sheriff of metro Phoenix’s sprawling Maricopa County, say the measure provides another tool to counter illegal immigration. Opponents, including Democrat Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, say the law is “racist” and encourages racial profiling.
The law takes effect 90 days after the state Legislature adjourns. With adjournment perhaps a week away, Mann says he may have to develop a curriculum and train 15,000 police, sheriff’s deputies, highway patrol officers and investigators by Aug. 1.
“Ninety days (to train officers) may be asking the impossible,” says Democrat Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, a member of the training board and critic of the law. “There are a huge number of very serious questions to be answered here, and 90 days is laughable.”
Copyright 2010 USA Today