Town wants police deputized to make immigration checks

Town wants police deputized to make immigration checks
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Category: Life

Town wants police deputized to make immigration checks
3/13/2007, 9:49 a.m. EDT
The Associated Press

http://www.nj.com/newsflash/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-24/1173794051154740.xml&storylist=jersey

MORRISTOWN, N.J. (AP) — Morristown officials, beset by complaints about immigrants gathering for day labor and living in crowded homes, want their police force to have the authority to check the immigration status of people in the city.

The town has applied for a program in which local police get that authority, along with the power to bring civil immigration charges that are handled in federal immigration court.

If accepted, Morristown could be the first town in New Jersey in the program by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported in Tuesday's editions.


The application was submitted Friday, Councilman Dick Tighe told the newspaper.

Ten law enforcement agencies are in the program, created by a federal law enacted in 1996. Immigration officials said they have had recent inquiries from nearly 50 agencies.

Immigrations and customs spokesman Michael Gilhooley said police officers get five weeks of training.

An immigrant rights advocate, however, said the program and the threat of deportation could intimidate illegal immigrants who are victims or witnesses of a crime.Are you fucking KIDDING ME??? The illegals ARE the ones committing the crimes on over 50 percent of the cases! They committed the first crime in sneaking across the border!

"To strike fear of adverse immigration consequences, that's going to build silence and it's going to make communities less safe," Elissa Steglich, a lawyer with the American Friends Service Committee in Newark, told the newspaper.

The 2000 Census found that nearly one-third of the town's 18,544 residents were born in other countries, but does not give a figure of how many may be illegal.

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Information from: The Star-Ledger, http://www.nj.com/starledger