Hypocrisy On ICE

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/534695/201005201855/Hypocrisy-On-ICE.aspx

05/20/2010

Border Security: As the administration condemns Arizona for cracking down on illegals, it's training Arizona to do just that. It's called the ICE 287(g) Program.

Homeland Security runs the federal program, which trains state and local police to identify and process criminal aliens for removal from the country. The ACLU gripes the program is "terrorizing immigrant communities," and has urged the administration to abandon it.

But the administration isn't listening. It's signing up several more local law enforcement agencies for the program, which it touts as a success story. As a recent Homeland Security report gushed:

"The 287(g) Program has emerged as one of the agency's most successful and popular partnership initiatives as more state and local leaders have come to understand how a shared approach to immigration enforcement can benefit their communities."

Under the 2006 program, more than 1,100 cops with 71 state and local agencies have helped the feds round up more than 110,000 illegals, the report says. Nine Arizona law enforcement agencies have taken advantage of it. In fact, all of the agreements were inked while Janet Napolitano was Arizona governor.

This is the same Napolitano, who despite running the federal program now as Homeland Security chief, is slamming Arizona's tough new immigration code as "bad law enforcement law."

"That's not the kind of law I would have signed," she asserted, explaining that she dealt with "laws of that ilk" in Arizona before and that most police outfits were opposed to them.

In fact, most Arizona cops strongly support the new law — probably because, after training with border agents, they see it works.

By partnering with Homeland Security, cops across the country have helped shrink for the first time the backlog of criminal aliens by 37,000 to 560,000. Yet only half of states — mostly conservative states with illegal immigration problems — have signed up.

Imagine how much safer we'd all be if liberal states also helped the feds round up these foreign outlaws — some of whom pose a terrorist threat — instead of boycotting Arizona for doing what the feds are doing right now, even under Obama.

Instead of snubbing Arizona, California should follow its lead in partnering with the federal government in this successful program to enforce immigration laws. The Golden State has the largest illegal alien population, yet has just one local entity in the program — San Bernardino County.

California agrees with Obama that Arizona's law is potentially "discriminatory." Funny, that's what the ACLU says about Obama's own program to train Arizona and other state cops to crack down on illegals — arguing it promotes an "anti-immigrant agenda" and encourages "racial profiling and civil-rights abuses."

But, shhh! This is the dirty little secret of Arizona's critics inside the Beltway.