Police on the Spot

In the absence of a workable immigration system, state and local officers are forced into a quandary.

DESPITE THE objections of police chiefs all over the country, officers at the state, city and county levels are increasingly being drawn into what should be the federal government's responsibility to deal with illegal immigrants. In some instances officers are compelled to arrest undocumented immigrants a fter routine traffic infractions if a computer shows that they are facing outstanding federal warrants. In this way local police are being made complicit in federal deportations, which subverts their attempts to establish ties and cooperative relations with immigrant communities. Hence the police chiefs' objections.

This is a potentially serious problem. Violent gangs have gained a dangerous foothold in many immigrant communities, including some in the Washington area. To contain them, police need informers and other kinds of help in those neighborhoods. But what immigrant informer will come forward if he knows that as soon as police enter his name into a database, they will be compelled to arrest him because he failed to appear at a hearing on his immigration status or a deportation proceeding some years ago?

A handful of police departments have refused to enforce the federal warrants, which include about 250,000 from the Immigration and Custo ms Enforcement agency. Most departments, including those in this region, are enforcing them, albeit unenthusiastically in some cases. Lawsuits have been brought challenging the inclusion of the warrants, which are for civil violations, in a national criminal database.

All of this is symptomatic of the underlying sickness, which is the nation's failure to devise a workable immigration policy and the resulting problem of 12 million illegal immigrants. The tensions between federal and local law enforcement will only worsen until lawmakers in Washington figure a way out of the impasse -- one that recognizes the reality that most of those immigrants are an integral part of the U.S. economy and are here to stay. As the Senate prepares to take up its immigration bill for the second time in a month, it should be mindful of how tenuous the status quo has become.