NYPD in Serious Quandary As War Is Brought Home
Tamar Jacoby on Ashcroft’s Anti-Terror Plans April 30, 2002 By Tamar Jacoby Should local police departments be cooperating with the Immigration and Naturalization Service in tracking down and apprehending illegal immigrants? In the wake of September 11, the answer seems like a no-brainer. But in fact, few questions raised since the attacks pose a more difficult dilemma — and ultimately, what seems like the obvious answer is dead wrong.
A recently leaked ruling by the legal counsel of the U.S. Justice Department threatens to create a serious quandary for New York Police. Eager to pull out all the stops in pursuing would-be terrorists, Attorney General Ashcroft is considering training and deputizing local law enforcement officials to help the INS do its job in apprehending illegal aliens. But a 1985 executive order issued by Mayor Edward I. Koch — and strongly supported, until now, by all of his successors — precludes the cops from even asking about a suspect’s immigration status, let alone reporting him or her to the INS or cooperating with the Feds in tracking undocumented foreigners.
Like other police forces around the country, the NYPD has gone on record with its reluctance to step up to the plate as Ashcroft is suggesting. “The [Koch] executive order still applies. It’s still policy and will remain so,” Deputy Commissioner Michael Collins told the Irish Echo last week. But so far Mayor Bloomberg has shown no signs that he would be willing to fight a federal directive, and at least one City Council member has come out on the opposite side from the police department — suggesting that the question is far from settled and that a wrenching conflict may lie ahead.
Those who support the Justice Department ruling feel it’s only common sense. The INS is plainly overburdened and ill-managed: how else to explain those visa-extension letters it mailed posthumously to two of the 9/11 hijackers. Thanks to years of underfunding, the agency has only 1,800 agents devoted to interior enforcement — all the rest are on duty at the borders and other ports of entry. Yet estimates suggest there are some 8 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., about 540,000 of them in New York state. The numbers speak for themselves, those who applaud the new ruling say. What’s the harm in asking local police to help these beleaguered federal agents?
Law enforcement officials in Florida and South Carolina are willing: both are reportedly set to enter into agreements with the INS to provide for training and deputizing local policemen. Seven or eight other states are also said to be talking to the Justice Department. And immigration skeptics — both in Washington and here in New York — are incredulous that anyone would even question Ashcroft’s position. “Given the…federal government’s inability to locate suspected terrorists within our borders, there can be no justification for not providing local law enforcement with the training they need to help in this effort,” Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Republican from Colorado, insisted last month.
So why are most cops in most states opposed to the idea? Mainly because they know that it would undermine their ability to do their jobs as policemen. Most illegal immigrants are terrified of officials – any officials – and they go out of their way to avoid them. This means they hesitate to report crimes to the police or even call 911 when they’re in trouble. Many are reluctant to cooperate with criminal investigations or testify as witnesses when a case comes to trial. In the most extreme instances, they won’t even go to the hospital or send their kids to school. After all, they’re here against the law — and in the third-world countries they come from, teachers and doctors too often work for the repressive state.
Inner-city policemen have been struggling with this problem for decades now, ever since the undocumented population started to swell in the 1970s. And most have concluded that their no. 1 challenge is to establish trust in immigrant communities — otherwise there can be no hope of effectively policing those neighborhoods. But the new Justice Department ruling would obliterate that trust overnight, taking big-city cops back to the bad old days when even a woman being battered by her husband or a bodega owner just robbed at gunpoint would be so worried about being deported that he or she wouldn’t call the police.
Nor do local police concerns end there. Many local departments — New York City’s included – are already strapped for resources, if not fending off cutbacks. (Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed fiscal year 2003 budget would eliminate $212 million in NYPD funding, and could require reductions in the number of police officers on the street.) And taking on immigration duties would only stretch these resources further. Most immediately, it would require extensive training: immigration law and the protections that go with it are very different from ordinary criminal law — and without training, police abuse would almost surely be rampant. But who, local cops wonder, is going to pay for that expensive training? And are city residents really going to be happier when the police start spending precious time and money searching busboys to make sure their papers are in order — leaving the department less and less manpower for apprehending serious criminals?
Then there’s the issue of profiling — a charge that now frightens self-conscious police departments almost more than the minority communities that are allegedly targeted. Even with extensive training, many police officials worry, cops charged with apprehending illegal aliens will end up stopping (and questioning and perhaps frisking) anyone who looks foreign or speaks with an accent — in addition to everything else, a sure bet to erode the trust that cops have developed in immigrant neighborhoods.
No wonder every New York mayor since Mr. Koch has opposed the idea of police cooperation with the INS. Rudolph Giuliani was the most passionate about it. He spoke out eloquently on the issue and eventually sued the federal government to block a provision in the 1996 welfare reform law that allowed city employees to turn in illegal immigrants seeking services. The city ultimately lost the lawsuit, but in those days the Justice Department was willing to look the other way, and the Koch executive order stood in spirit if not in letter — just as similar orders and ordinances and mayoral directives prevailed in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.
But now, in New York and elsewhere, the question is up in the air again. The White House isn’t particularly happy with the Justice Department’s ruling — for the same reason most cops aren’t, and also because of what it could mean for Republican efforts to woo voters in immigrant communities. But if Mr. Ashcroft prevails, or a compromise between Justice and the White House requires even limited cooperation, the NYPD could find itself unpleasantly up against the wall.
Immigrant advocacy groups in New York are calling for Mayor Bloomberg to issue what they call a “confidentiality regulation” that would prevent local officials from disclosing anything they know about a city resident’s immigration status — thus effectively overriding the Justice Department’s pending directive. But the mayor has said little on the issue and indicted no willingness to defy the feds in this way. Meanwhile, City Council Member Peter Vallone Jr. says he is inclined to support the Ashcroft ruling. “I disagree with Giuliani,” he told The Sun this week. “In light of recent events, I think there should be greater cooperation between the police and the INS, and the City Council will be using its oversight powers to make sure that happens.” Does this mean a battle is in offing? It’s too soon to tell. But one thing ought to be clear enough: when it comes to policing, the police probably know best — and it makes little sense to second-guess them. Empowering local cops to do the INS’s job would not get the job done and would only undermine law and order in the city.
Of course, change is needed — 9/11 taught us that. The INS needs more agents. Those agents need to be equipped with better intelligence, more sophisticated technology and any other resources they require to pursue potential terrorists. Most important, we as a nation need to fix our broken immigration law, taking steps to bring it more into line with the realities of the country’s labor needs — needs nowhere more apparent than here in New York City. But sending the cops out to finger hardworking and otherwise law-abiding New Yorkers is not the answer. Paradoxical as it seems, that will only make the city less safe and, in the end, by reducing immigrant cooperation with the police, could even make it easier for would-be terrorists to menace us.
Ms. Jacoby, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, is the author of “Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Struggle for Integration.”. ©2002 New York Sun About Tamar Jacoby: articles, bio, and photo |
