Database Is Tool in Deporting Fugitives

Manger and other area police chiefs have concluded that they are duty-bound to enforce all National Crime Information Center warrants, even at the expense of being perceived as an extension of the immigration bureaucracy.

Despite the relatively small number of arrests in Montgomery, immigrant advocates have told Manger that the unexpected deportations have torn families apart and sown fear among immigrants.

Hernandez entered the United States illegally in September 2000 through the Mexican border. He joined relatives in Hyattsville, found work as a welder and began dating a Guatemalan woman. Their two sons, a 5-year-old and a 10-month-old, were born in Maryland.

He was driving to work about 5:30 a.m. Jan. 30 when an officer pulled him over on New Hampshire Avenue after Hernandez changed lanes abruptly. Officer Michael Collins ran his name through the FBI database -- which is routine for traffic stops -- and found the immigration warrant. Hernandez was handcuffed and taken to a police station. When Brenda Cruz, his common-law wife, arrived at the station, she wasn't allowed to see him, she said.

Fuming, she says, she told Collins: "I hope this never happens to you. Today, my kids lost their father."

As the officer drove Hernandez from the police station to the county jail in Rockville, where he was to be picked up by immigration officers, Collins told Hernandez he took no pleasure in taking him into custody, Hernandez said recently from Guatemala.

" 'If you had told me from the start about your kids, I would have let you go,' " Hernandez said the officer told him. A Takoma Park police spokesman said Collins recalls the conversation differently.

"He did indicate that he regretted this, but he had to do his job," said Takoma Park police spokesman Cpl. Andrew John.

The database, by design, is a repository of criminal records. A few noncriminal records have been introduced, including missing-persons files and protective orders for victims of domestic violence. Congress authorized the inclusion of deported felons' records in 1996 to help authorities identify those who reenter the country illegally. Lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully in recent years to authorize the inclusion of civil immigration warrants in the database.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Department of Justice issued an opinion concluding that local law enforcement agencies have broad authority to enforce immigration laws, a departure from Justice opinions drafted in 1996 and 1989 that laid out a narrower role for police officers in enforcing immigration laws. The new opinion coincided with the inclusion of absconders' files in the database.

A U.S. District Court judge in New York ordered the government to remove civil immigration records from the database in June 2004 after ruling in favor of a man who sued the government after the D.C. police department withdrew a job offer when it found an immigration record through the database.

After the government agreed to expunge the man's record, the judge backed down from ordering it to purge all other immigration records from the database.