Advocacy Groups Assail Immigration Enforcement Program

Immigrant advocacy groups on Friday assailed a Department of Homeland Security decision to continue deputizing state and local law enforcement agents to catch illegal immigrants, saying the department's new rules aimed at curbing racial profiling by police were inadequate.

Critics focused their fire at the continuing participation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose Phoenix-based agency has produced the largest number of arrests under the federal program and who is under investigation by the Justice Department for alleged civil rights violations. DHS terminated Maricopa deputies' authority to investigate federal immigration violators in the community, but allowed them to continue checking for illegal immigrants already in jail.

"Entering into any agreement with the Bull Connor of our generation extends legitimacy to a rogue cop dedicated to terrorizing Latino immigrants," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, referencing the segregationist police official of 1960s Birmingham, Ala.

DHS said four of 66 state and local agencies dropped out of the enforcement program because of new federal requirements, five have newly signed up, and six more are awaiting approval.

Several allied groups, urging the Obama administration and Congress to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, called the program a "misguided fantasy" that would not work without broader changes. Such changes include providing a path to legal status for productive members of the nearly 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, and revising who and how many can immigrate in the future.

"Succumbing to the siren call of an enforcement-only approach will not solve the immigration problem once and for all," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan pro-immigrant advocacy organization in Washington.

In Arizona, Arpaio blasted the DHS decision as "politically motivated" from the Obama White House, and he carried out the latest "crime suppression sweep" Friday in Surprise, Ariz., a northwestern Phoenix suburb. Deputies spent the afternoon on the lookout for illegal immigrants violating traffic or other state and local laws under Arpaio's jurisdiction. The sheriff vowed to turn over those found to federal authorities, whether they wanted them or not.

"We don't need [federal] authority to keep doing what we've been doing," Arpaio said. "From the White House on down, they don't want me enforcing the law. . . . Obama ought to be saying, 'Thank you, Sheriff, for getting all the illegals out of the workplace.' "