January 19, 2004

Preposterous “Sanctuary” Rules Forbid Police to Enforce Immigration Laws.

That sounds like an exaggeration of some sort, but evidently it isn’t:

Some of the most dangerous thugs preying on immigrant communities in Los Angeles are in this country illegally. Yet the Los Angeles Police Department cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status.

Dozens of gang members from Mara Salvatrucha, a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang, for example, have sneaked back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly weapon and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and know that their mere presence in the country after deportation is a felony. Yet if an LAPD officer arrests an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is the officer who will be treated as a criminal for violating an LAPD rule.

That rule, Special Order 40, prohibits officers from questioning or apprehending someone only for an immigration violation or from notifying the immigration service (now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement) about an illegal alien. Only if the person has been booked for a nonimmigration felony or multiple misdemeanors may officers even inquire about his immigration status.

Such “sanctuary” rules, replicated in cities with a high number of immigrants, are a testament to the political power of immigrant lobbies. “We can’t even talk about” illegal alien crime, a frustrated LAPD captain said. “People are afraid of a backlash from Hispanics.”

Police commanders may not want to discuss the illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling: 95% of all outstanding warrants for homicide in Los Angeles (which total more than 1,200) are for illegal aliens, according to officers. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (which total 17,000) are for illegal aliens. The leadership of the Columbia Li’l Cycos gang, which has used murder and racketeering to control the drug market around MacArthur Park, was about 60% illegal aliens in 2002, says a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted them in 2002.

A rule that forbids police from enforcing a specific law? This is absurd.

Read the whole thing.

Update: This insightful comment was just received from reader and blogger Brian Flemming.

It was not exactly a left-winger who instituted rule 40.

It was LAPD chief Darryl Gates.

He did it because he was in a lesser of two evils position. If the LAPD became known in, say, the MacArthur Park area for arresting and deporting people, no immigrants in that area would report crime or become police informants. Crime would go UP, not down.

I live next to MacArthur Park. While I wish the members of Central American and Mexican (and any other) gangs here could be arrested, frankly, for any reason whatsoever, I’m glad rule 40 is in place. It’s more useful for the cops here to have good street intelligence and willing reports from residents (many of whom have to overcome a natural fear of police, as the police in some of their home countries are better known as death squads) than it is to be able to use powers of arrest in very selected circumstances.

It’s not perfect, no. But as I said, I live next to MacArthur Park. These threats are not exactly theoretical to me. I’m glad the LAPD chose a policy that truly reduces crime compared to the other choice you seem to propose.