Caution on INS at Anaheim Jail

The interaction between local police and federal Immigration and Naturalization Service officers is a sensitive subject that keeps cropping up in Orange County. It came up again last Tuesday in Anaheim when Latino activists, who have vowed civil disobedience if Anaheim doesn’t break its ties with the INS at the city jail, came to the council to renew a demand that the policy be changed. To date the council has taken no action.

There are some immigration issues that offer little room for compromise. One example was the recent request by a self-appointed immigration watchdog group that Anaheim seek federal approval to give local police the power to arrest someone on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. The City Council wisely ignored that ill-advised effort.

But having INS officers at the jail since 1996 has proven so far to be one policy where local police and immigration officials can work together. The idea is to identify and track illegal immigrants who are accused of committing crimes through the criminal justice system.

Although INS agents are at numerous county jails in the state, including Orange County’s, Anaheim was the first city jail in California it staffed. It has since added officers at Costa Mesa and Fullerton city jails. They are the only three city lockups in the state the INS staffs.

What brought the current conflict to a head was Anaheim’s recent arrest of an 18-year-old woman originally stopped for a traffic offense. She was taken to jail when she couldn’t produce identification. A federal agent at the jail started deportation proceedings after determining she was here illegally. A case like this raises justifiable concern about whether people not convicted of crimes are being singled out unfairly.

In most cases residency questions are readily resolved. But of the 9,475 suspects detained at the Anaheim jail last year, more than 14% were found to be in the country illegally. In the first year, about 18% of those arrested were reported to be undocumented immigrants. Those statistics may justify the continued INS jail operation, but care still must be taken to avoid singling out immigrants and looking for minor infractions as a pretext for deportation.

Federal officers, and local police, should administer the program judiciously. Profiling should not be used by officers in the field or in INS processing procedures. In some cases it may not be very cost-effective to have people arrested on minor offenses processed and deported, only to have them slip back across the border. But having immigration officers stationed at the Anaheim jail is turning up a significant percentage of illegal residents who have broken the law, and that is appropriate enforcement of the immigration laws. But deportation is a powerful weapon, and authorities must use it with restraint.