Immigration Law

My friend René Castilla has written an excellent guest editorial for the Dallas Morning News about the immigration situation in Irving, Texas, his current, and my former, hometown. In fact, this is by far the most rational and logical discussion of the situation that I have seen.

I have posted before about Irving's participation in the Criminal Alien Program, in which the Irving police call the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement department pretty much any time they detain a Latino without proper immigration paperwork. This has resulted in illegal aliens being deported because they committed traffic violations, regardless of the positive contributions they may have made to the community in the years they lived here.

The editorial is so good, I'm going to take the liberty of publishing it in its entirety. Please don't tell  the Dallas Morning News...

When the Irving City Council adopted the Criminal Alien Program earlier this year, it was in response to the mounting pressure from the community and a council member to participate in the federal program 287g, an immigration enforcement section of the Immigration and Naturalization Act.

The majority of the City Council wanted no part of 287g ,and neither did Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd, partly because city jailers would come under the supervision of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and partly because ICE wants the city to underwrite the cost of implementing the program.The minority community wanted no part of 287g because it gave wide discretion for police officers to pick people off the streets who looked suspiciously Hispanic and maybe undocumented.

Long before the City Council formally adopted the Criminal Alien Program, Chief Boyd established a working relationship with ICE, whose district offices were in Irving and whose nearby agents were invited on a regular basis to make a sweep of Irving jails. ICE did identify criminal illegal aliens and had them deported.

When a resolution came before the city council to adopt the Criminal Alien Program, it did so with the support of the minority leadership of Irving, including those Hispanics outside of Irving who are now organizing protests denouncing the program.

The Criminal Alien Program was seen as a better alternative to 287g. It rid our communities of criminal illegal aliens who were drug dealers and other felons preying on our community.

So why did it turn sour?

ICE moved its office from Irving to Dallas, and the agents who had regularly entered Irving jails were no longer available to make on-site visits. Face-to-face interviews switched to telephone interviews. The procedure now had jailers deciding when to call ICE for a telephone interview with a detainee.

If a jailer can't establish identity, call ICE.

That's the rub.

When it was reported that ICE was now deporting 300 people a month (mostly Hispanic), suspicions were aroused. And rightly so. Individuals were turned over to ICE for traffic violations and failure to provide proper identification, in some cases for public intoxication.

Traffic citations are nothing new. What changed is that now there are consequences for these traffic violations in Irving. ICE is in the picture under the Criminal Alien Program.

What didn't change were the old practices for processing individuals to determine identification. No identification? You speak Spanish? Call ICE. Irving police say this procedure applies to everyone without regard to race. Maybe.

What the demonstrations and shouting matches did was call to our attention that there are flaws in the Criminal Alien Program.

Now that the shouting has stopped, it is time for the mayor, the police chief and the minority leadership in Irving to come up with workable guidelines for the program palatable to all sides.

For example, at what point should jailers call in ICE, especially when they detain Spanish speakers with limited English speaking ability? Entering the United States is a civil offense, not a criminal offense, so why equate one with the other?

Most traffic violations – driving without a license or public intoxication – are all class C misdemeanors. It is certainly less serious than a felony. So maybe felonies should be the triggering mechanism to call in ICE. Failure to show proof of identity is cause for being taken to jail for fingerprinting. But if fingerprinting brings up no criminal record or outstanding warrants, does calling ICE have to be the next step?

These are all important questions for the mayor, police chief and minority leadership in Irving to consider.

There is no indication that the City Council is going to rescind the Criminal Alien Program, even though fear of police is spreading throughout Irving's Hispanic community. Stories of random police stops to check IDs are beginning to surface.

It's time for Irving to take back its city and regain control of a program gone bad. A solution-based dialogue is an important first step.

René Castilla is executive dean of North Lake College South Irving Center and chairman of the Mayor's Human Relations Advisory Committee. His e-mail address is castilla@dcccd.edu.