Hispanic immigrant workers are becoming an increasing target for Arkansas local police, who are authorized to perform immigration raids and other functions once left for federal immigration agents, the Associated Press reports.
Recent raids in northwestern Arkansas have rounded up scores of undocumented immigrants, but legal residents have been temporarily detained too.
“It feels like it is dangerous to be Hispanic,” activist Jim Miranda told AP.
Under program 287 (g) of the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement, federal immigration agents have been training local police authorities nationwide to identify and detain undocumented immigrants.
Since the program began in 2002, over 700 officers in dozens of local jurisdictions have been trained in California, Alabama, Massachusetts Oklahoma, Florida and other states. Police who participate in the program search prisons and jails to ensure that illegal immigrants are turned over to the federal government for deportation.
Pro-immigration groups have criticized the program and increasing numbers of local police forces have openly resisted pressure to assist the ICE.
Julie Myers, assistant secretary of ICE, recently defended the program during a speech at Harvard Law School, according to the Harvard Law Record.
Myers disagreed that expansion of the program was problematic and stressed that the program is expanding slowly while it extensively trains local police departments. There is great pressure, she added, on the federal government to deport aliens with criminal records, according to the Record.
In Arkansas, interest in 287 (g) grew as previous federal immigration polices failed to curb the waves of immigrants entering the state in search of jobs. But some local police officials acknowledged there are problems with the federal program, nonetheless.
“Through these investigations, there’s going to be collateral damage,” Tim Helder, sheriff of Washington County, told AP. “If there’s 19 people in there who could or could not be here illegally, they are going to be checked. Although those people might not be conducting criminal activity, they are going to get slammed up in the middle of the investigation.”
Arkansas legislators authorized state troopers to participate in immigration issues in 2005 but only recently have state police applied to participate in the program, according to AP.
