Frustrated at Congress' inability to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year, towns and cities throughout the United States are debating whether to put immigration enforcement into the hands of their local police departments by seeking authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).[1] 

This section of the INA, codified at section 287(g), encourages state and local law enforcement officers to obtain training in immigration enforcement from Department of Homeland Security.  This approach to solving our country's broken immigration system is misguided.  Shifting federal enforcement responsibilities to local police departments threatens to endanger immigrants' rights and hinder community policing efforts.  

Avenues already exist under current law to allow local police to identify undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes and contact the appropriate federal authorities. Allowing police officers to arrest individuals who have not committed crimes and are not a threat to our communities will trigger a wave of fear within the immigrant communities and may undermine officers' ability to identify real criminals.

Community policing depends upon the combined efforts of community members and law enforcement officials.  These strategies proved highly successful in the 1990s, as states and localities began to embrace the community policing model.  The Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that since 1994, violent crime rates have declined, reaching the lowest level ever recorded in 2005.[2]  The rate of individuals reporting crimes to police officers also increased as community policing expanded. 

If city councils choose to break this trust between residents and police, they will endanger the most vulnerable members of the immigrant community. Immigrant victims of domestic violence, trafficking, and other violence would be discouraged from reporting these crimes and would be further isolated by their abusers, who often use immigration status to manipulate their victims.

Through its work with immigrant communities, the National Immigrant Justice Center has witnessed how detaining non-criminal residents can destroy families and harm communities.

The 287(g) style of law enforcement will perpetuate a system that has proven unworkable and dangerous (more than 60 immigrants have died in immigration custody in recent years), but it will not make our streets safer.

[1] INA 287(g); 8 USC 1357(g) "Performance of immigration officer functions by state officers and employees"

[2] Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Crime Characteristics," Updated April 18, 2007, available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_c.htm.