The Honorable John Ashcroft
Attorney General
Department of Justice
Tenth Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
Dear Attorney General Ashcroft:
We are writing to express our grave concern about a proposed change in a decades-old Department of Justice (DOJ) policy precluding state and local law enforcement officers from becoming entangled in enforcing the civil provisions of the immigration laws. We understand that a number of police departments and associations have expressed opposition or strong reservations about the proposed change.
We urge you to take this opportunity to rethink this proposal and to consider other ways your Department can achieve its anti-terrorism and other law enforcement goals without changing the current legal authority of state and local law enforcement agencies.
According to a 1996 Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memorandum, while state and local police may lawfully assist the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in certain respects, "[s]tate and local police lack recognized legal authority to stop and detain an alien solely on suspicion of civil deportability, as opposed to a criminal violation of the immigration laws or other laws." We believe this analysis is sound, and that any change would be vulnerable to legal challenge.
Involving state and local law enforcement in immigration status issues will have a severe impact on the civil rights and civil liberties of immigrant communities. Such a policy will increase racial profiling and other unjustified stops, not only of undocumented workers, but also of legal residents and United States citizens who "look foreign." As you are aware, many of these problems have plagued earlier efforts of state and local law enforcement officers to become involved in civil immigration enforcement. For example, an effort in 1997 in Chandler, Arizona on the part of local police to enforce immigration laws resulted in widespread civil rights abuses, including unjustified arrests of legal residents and citizens of Mexican descent, severely strained police and community relations, and lead to substantial liability on the part of the municipality.
Because of these problems, many state and local police departments and local governments have longstanding policies precluding their officers from becoming entangled in immigration enforcement, leading state and local police departments to seriously question any proposed change. Having a specialized federal agency whose sole responsibility is immigration enforcement simply makes good sense, as it frees other agencies, such as state and local police, to investigate crime and to obtain the cooperation of the communities they serve and protect. A different policy would cause victims of crimes, witnesses, and others in tight knit immigrant communities to refuse to cooperate with state and local police for fear that they, or close friends and family members, could face deportation if they interact with their local police. It would also undermine the painstaking community police efforts in which many departments have been engaged, squandering decades of difficult work in winning the trust of communities whose members often come from nations where the police are corrupt and feared.
Good law enforcement requires trust. The proposed policy change, by dragging state and local police into the business of questioning and detaining individuals solely on the basis of immigration status, would drive a wedge between immigrant communities and the very police they need to keep safe. The proposal should be abandoned.
Sincerely,
Laura W. Murphy
Director, ACLU Washington National Office
Timothy H. Edgar
ACLU Legislative Counsel
Cc: Alberto Gonzalez, White House Counsel
Hon. Edward M. Kennedy
Hon. Sam Brownback
Hon. George Gekas
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee