Utah: Demand federal action
There are no comments for this page [ Add Comment ]Friday, April 13, 2007
For all the windbagging over illegal immigration by members of Congress and the Bush administration, it's shocking how little the federal government does about it far from the nation's porous borders.
Last week's story on the subject by Standard-Examiner reporter Jesse Fruhwirth was a revealing tale of local law enforcement frustration and federal inability to cope with a problem that's high on every politician's to-do list. It stood in stark contrast to the official claims by Beltway officials that they are making progress in the battle against illegal immigration.
As Fruhwirth discovered, illegals who are arrested for additional crimes -- unless they are especially grievous -- are usually released back into the community because Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials don't have enough employees to do their job: detaining and deporting the lawbreakers.
As our reporter discovered, the feds don't have the funding to complete their assignments, and that's leaving municipal and county law enforcement frustrated.
According to Davis County Sheriff's Capt. Bob Yeaman, the ICE told him if it doesn't respond to the notification by the county that it has an illegal immigrant in custody "within a 24-hour period, just let (the prisoners) go."
That's no way to protect the public or to deal with the fundamentals of the illegal immigration crisis.
Ogden Police Chief Jon Greiner, who is also a state senator, told Fruh that lawmakers plan to huddle this summer in an attempt to get their arms around this and related immigration issues.
He reiterated the belief held by some of his legislative colleagues that local and county law enforcement officers should be able to act as immigration officers, as well.
Our hope is that Greiner, who understands firsthand the limits of state funding and training and staffing, will sober them up regarding this issue. This is a federal law enforcement responsibility, and if the state begins down the pathway of requiring, funding and training law enforcement to pursue ICE responsibilities -- enforcement, primarily, and detaining illegals in county jails until they can be transferred to federal custody -- not only will it get very expensive very quickly, but it will remove any incentive for the federal government to step up and fulfill its responsibility for enforcement.
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