Many Agencies Prohibit Officers from Reporting Immigration Violations

[SPEtactical]

Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where crime from these lawbreakers is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of gang members from a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have snuck back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, shootings, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should an LAPD officer arrest an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is the officer who will be treated as a criminal by his own department — for violating the LAPD’s rule against enforcing immigration law.

The LAPD’s ban on immigration enforcement is replicated in immigrant-heavy localities across the country — in New York, Chicago, Austin, San Diego, and Houston, for example. These so-called "sanctuary policies" generally prohibit a city’s employees, including the police, from reporting immigration violations to federal authorities.

Sanctuary laws are a testament to the political power of immigrant lobbies. So powerful is this demographic clout that police officials shrink from even mentioning the illegal alien crime wave. "We can’t even talk about it," says a frustrated LAPD captain. "People are afraid of a backlash from Hispanics." Another LAPD commander in a predominantly Hispanic, gang-infested district sighs: "I would get a firestorm of criticism if I talked about [enforcing the immigration law against illegals]." Neither captain would speak for attribution.

But however pernicious in themselves, sanctuary rules are a symptom of a much broader disease: the near total loss of control over immigration policy. Fifty years ago, immigration policy may have driven immigration numbers, but today the numbers drive policy. The non-stop increase of legal and illegal aliens is reshaping the language and the law to dissolve any distinction between legal and illegal immigration and, ultimately, the very idea of national borders.

It is a measure of how topsy-turvy the immigration environment has become that to ask police officials about the illegal crime problem feels like a gross social faux pas, something simply not done in polite company. And a police official, asked to violate this powerful taboo against discussing criminal aliens, will respond with a strangled response—sometimes, as in the case of a New York deputy commissioner with whom I spoke, disappearing from communication altogether. At the same time, millions of illegal aliens work, shop, travel, and commit crimes in plain view, utterly confident in their de facto immunity from the immigration law.

I asked the Miami Police Department’s spokesman, Detective Delrish Moss, about his employer’s policy on illegal law-breakers. In September 2003, the force had arrested a Honduran visa violator for seven terrifying rapes. The previous year, Miami officers had had the suspect, Reynaldo Elias Rapalo, in custody for lewd and lascivious molestation, without checking his immigration status. Had they done so, they would have discovered his visa overstay, a deportable offense. "We have shied away from unnecessary involvement dealing with immigration issues," explains Detective Moss, choosing his words carefully, "because of our large immigration population."

Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:



• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.



• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the bloody 18th Street Gang in California is illegal (estimated membership: 20,000); police officers say the proportion is undoubtedly much greater. The gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complicated drug distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and is responsible for an assault or robbery every day in Los Angeles County. The gang has dramatically expanded its numbers over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, a vast proportion
illegal, from Central America and Mexico.



• The leadership of the Columbia Li’l Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former Assistant U.S. Attorney Luis Li. Frank "Pancho Villa" Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.



Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime analysis. The LAPD and the Los Angeles City Attorney recently requested a judicial injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood. The injunction targets the 18th Street Gang and, as the press release puts it, the "non-gang members" who sell drugs in Hollywood on behalf of the gang. Those "non-gang members" are virtually all illegal Mexicans, smuggled into the country by a trafficking ring organized by 18th Street bigs. The illegal Mexicans pay off their transportation debt to the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay in the business.

The immigration status of these non-gang "Hollywood dealers," as the City Attorney calls them, is universally known among officers and gang prosecutors. But the gang injunction is silent on the matter. And if a Hollywood officer were to arrest an illegal dealer (known on the street as a "border brother") for his immigration status, or even notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),* he would be severely disciplined for violation of Special Order 40, the city’s sanctuary policy.

A Safe Haven
The ordinarily tough-as-nails former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates enacted Special Order 40 in 1979 — in response to the city’s burgeoning population of illegal aliens — showing that even the most unapologetic law-and-order cop is no match for immigration demographics. The order prohibits officers from "initiating police action where the objective is to discover the alien status of a person." In practice, this means that the police may not even ask someone they have arrested about his immigration status until after criminal charges have been entered. They may not arrest someone for immigration violations. Officers certainly may not check a suspect’s immigration status prior to arrest, nor may they notify ICE about an illegal alien picked up for minor violations. Only if an illegal alien has already been booked for a felony or multiple misdemeanors may they inquire into his status or report him to immigration authorities. The bottom line: a cordon sanitaire between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities that creates a safe haven for illegal criminals.

Los Angeles’ sanctuary law, and all others like it, contradicts everything that has been learned about public safety in the 1990s. A key policing discovery of the last decade was the "great chain of being" in criminal behavior. Pick up a law-violator for a "minor" crime, and you’ll likely prevent a major crime. Enforcing graffiti and turnstile-jumping laws nabs you murderers and robbers. Enforcing known immigration violations, such as reentry following deportation, against known felons would be even more productive. LAPD officers recognize illegal deported gang members all the time — flashing gang signs at court hearings for rival gangbangers, hanging out on the corner, or casing a target. These illegal returnees are, simply by being in the country after deportation, committing a felony. "But if I see a deportee from the Mara Salvatrucha [Salvadoran prison] gang crossing the street, I know I can’t touch him," laments a Los Angeles gang officer. Only if the deported felon has given the officer some other reason to stop him — such as an observed narcotics sale — can the officer accost him, and only for that non-immigration-related reason. The officer cannot arrest him for the immigration felony.

Such a policy is extraordinarily inefficient and puts the community at risk for as long as these vicious immigration-law-breakers remain free. The department’s top brass brush off such concerns. No big deal if you’re seeing deported gangbangers back on the streets, they say. Just put them under surveillance for "real" crimes and arrest them for those. But surveillance is very manpower-intensive. Where there is an immediate ground for arresting a violent felon, it is absurd to demand that the woefully understaffed LAPD ignore it.


http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back704.html

[MisterK]

• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

HOLY ****E! :eek:

[matt87]

Should just call California Mexico.

[MOCOP]

It's the Politicians to include the Police Chiefs and Sheriffs not wanting to offend the Hispanic Vote. Go figure.

[fedscout]

Only three states in the Union are actually "allowed" to enforce immigration laws. The more elected officials turn away from what's right in order to stay in office or not offend anyone's itty bitty feelings, the more problems we'll all have. Let's see what happens when some gangbanger jacks up some movie star or politician. Hell, they'd probably call it an isolated incident or pretend it didn't happen.
Even the ACLU is in on it. I know, BIG surprise! I thought the "A" stood for "American", not "Alien".

[SayWhat]

Bratton is a criminal idiot

[ngcsubutterbar]

I'm a criminal idiot

Alright: You were banned once, then twice, and now yet again. GET A CLUE!

[Stan Switek]

Bratton is not a criminal but he has most certainly caved into special interests in regards to immigration. On one local radio show he stated "If you dont like or immigration laws, leave the state!" Bratton even favors drivers licenses for illegal aliens. Here is a link to his comments. http://www.brattonmustgo.com/

[retdetsgt]

Our suckass mayor stopped us cooperating with INS when he was chief. Now that he's mayor, it's gotten worse. He pulled us out of the FBI Terrorism Task Force.

[Stan Switek]

Is he the guy who had a hissy becaue they would not share intel with him?

[retdetsgt]

Is he the guy who had a hissy becaue they would not share intel with him?

Yep. I'm sort of amazed that he got away with that. He has a pretty sordid background with women, including some very young ones that no one is following up on. If the FBI had done an extensive background check, he could have been pretty embarrassed. But they blinked first and he won.