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Demanding better immigration solutions

Posted on May 13, 2010 by Staff

SARAH PRESTON

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General released a report at the end of March detailing the failings of the so-called 287(g) program – the program that allows local law-enforcement agencies to partner with the federal government to enforce immigration laws. The report raises several important questions about the effectiveness and efficiency of the program.

For North Carolinians, this comes as little surprise since the inspector general’s report comes on the heels of a UNC study on the costs and consequences of the program in North Carolina that raised many similar concerns.

In order to participate in the 287(g) program, local governments must sign an agreement with the federal government. North Carolina has nine of the 67 agreements that have been signed across the country, the most of any state. As a result, much of the testing of the efficacy of the program is going on right here in North Carolina. Unfortunately, the results are far from supportive of the use of the programs.

Instead, the UNC study, titled “The 287(g) Program: The Costs and Consequences of Local Immigration Enforcement in North Carolina Communities,” reports that the vast majority of the people being detained under the 287(g) program are only ever charged with misdemeanors – often traffic offenses such as driving without a license. Rather than rounding up serious criminals who pose a genuine threat to the community, the program is mostly capturing average, hardworking folks because of minor offenses. Is this really where North Carolina wants to be deploying its limited law-enforcement resources?

To make matters worse, the study found no evidence that increased immigration into a geographic area increases the crime rates in that area. In fact, the statistical analysis performed for the study indicated that focusing on immigration law enforcement in order to reduce crime rates likely only distracts from other factors that have a greater potential for reducing crime.

The UNC report went on to show that the 287(g) program in Mecklenburg County has cost taxpayers $5.3 million dollars a year, while the program in Alamance has cost $4.8 million in salaries for staff, training and detention of unauthorized immigrants in the county jail. The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s report showed that funding from the federal government has spiked, going from $5 million to $68 million in just four years. Here in North Carolina, the General Assembly has appropriated $1.5 million dollars over the last three years for local enforcement of immigration law.

Yet neither report demonstrates a return on that taxpayer investment – no reduction in crime rates and certainly no real improvement to the broken immigration system. Instead, the reports indicate rampant abuses of the program, decreased reporting of crimes by the immigrant and Latino communities and racial profiling by poorly trained law-enforcement officers.

The bottom line is this: The immigration system is broken – there is no doubt about that. But ramped up enforcement by local law enforcement with lackluster training is no way to fix it. Instead, the North Carolina General Assembly and Congress ought to focus on creating a fair and efficient system that makes it possible for much larger numbers of immigrants to come and stay legally. As long as our system requires good and hardworking families to wait for decades before they can begin to build new lives for themselves in America, the 287(g) program will remain a costly, inefficient and harmful waste of taxpayer dollars.

Sarah Preston is legislative counsel for the ACLU of North Carolina.

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