Without Fail

Just days after New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram issued a directive that all law enforcement officers check suspects immigration status with the feds after arrests for violent crimes, local police officials are looking to find a way to avoid carrying out that order.

In Englewood, where the police estimate that up to a fifth of the population of 26,000 are illegal immigrants, the authorities have long asked about immigration status, so “this doesn’t change things at all,” according to Arthur O’Keefe, the deputy police chief. But in Freehold, where a lawsuit recently ended attempts by borough officials to fine day laborers, a new police chief, on the job for only seven weeks, said he was still trying to divine what Ms. Milgram’s instructions actually meant.

“I’m not sure how we’re going to go about enacting it on the local level,” said the chief, Mitchell E. Roth, adding that his 34 full-time officers do not routinely ask about immigration status. “We have special-interest groups. We have to be very diplomatic.”

Ms. Milgram’s order was motivated by the arrest of an illegal immigrant who was out on bail, his status unknown to the authorities, in a brutal triple homicide here this month. It brings immigration authorities more forcefully into local law enforcement matters.

For a list of offenses, ranging from theft to murder and including drunken driving, local police are supposed to ask about the immigration status of people they arrest. If they suspect that the person is in the country illegally, they are supposed to contact representatives from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But concerns are already being raised about the potential fallout on immigrants’ cooperation with the authorities, despite Ms. Milgram’s order that victims and witnesses should not be questioned about their status. Many expressed particular concern about the consequences for victims of domestic violence, who are often already reluctant to report their partners to the police.

Immigration advocates said Thursday that many calls had started coming in from people worried about whether the new directive would be implemented fairly.

Shai Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, said that members of his coalition were calling it “the law of unintended consequences.”

I have to ask, but what are the unintended consequences of sanctuary cities and the failures to enforce immigration law as it is currently written? We know what some those unintended (or perhaps were they intended all along by proponents?) are: large numbers of illegal aliens whose very status is illegal and subject to deportation. It's created a cheap source of labor, and a group of people who can be exploited on a daily basis with little chance of speaking out on it because those people are concerned that their immigration status would result in deportation back to their country of origin.

Still, these are issues that need to be addressed at the state and local level to ensure public safety. At the same time, action needs to be taken on the federal level to ensure the enforcement of the existing immigration law.