Immigration Confusion

CALIFORNIA
How serious a crime should it take to get an illegal alien deported?

On April 1, officers assigned to the LAPD’s 77th Street Division in South Central L.A. arrested 27 people for illegal street vending. Sixteen of them were determined to be illegal aliens, and they were reported to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The ICE agents placed immigration holds on the 16, initiating the process for deporting them upon disposition of the local charges. The notification to ICE was made with the full knowledge of the officers’ chain of command.

But soon alarm bells were ringing in the mayor’s and city council’s offices, in the local Spanish-language media, and finally in various offices of the LAPD. Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz, who heads the LAPD’s Central Bureau and therefore has no line authority over the South Bureau’s 77th Street Division, circumvented the chain of command and ordered the 16 illegal aliens released on their own recognizance. The other 11 arrestees, all of whom were citizens or legal U.S. residents, received no such consideration and had to make bail or remain in custody until their court appearances.

It may not surprise you to learn it was Diaz who was promoted to deputy chief after the May Day troubles of 2007.

In the wake of all this, some LAPD officers are asking their superiors for clarified guidelines on when illegal-alien arrestees should be reported to ICE. Clearly, Mayor Villaraigosa and his sycophants in the LAPD want to restrict such notifications to only the most serious of offenders. In fact, in an e-mail sent out to some officers in the LAPD’s South Bureau last week, Commander Andrew Smith, the assistant commanding officer for the bureau, said the subject of ICE notification had come up in a recent senior staff meeting.

“The direction given by [Chief William Bratton] is that we call ICE only on the following cases: 1) Violent felony arrestees, and 2) Gang members arrested for felony charges.”

Perhaps the mayor and the police chief will find time to inform the law-abiding residents of Los Angeles — even otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens — what benefit might be derived from letting criminal illegal aliens escape deportation and remain among them. Many LAPD officers would be keen to hear their explanation...

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