In Montgomery County, the jurisdiction with the state's largest immigrant population, police Chief J. Thomas Manger appears in a public service announcement with Jaime Moreno, a DC United soccer player originally from Bolivia, urging viewers: "Don't be afraid to call the police."
"We have a long-standing policy of not inquiring into the documentation status of immigrants living and working in Montgomery County unless that individual has been arrested and charged with committing a crime," said Lt. Paul Starks, a county police spokesman.
Authorities typically learn if an arrested person is in the country illegally once they are processed at a detention facility, said Toohey.
"If someone is an illegal immigrant, we would notify the appropriate authorities, just as if we found a robbery warrant out of Pennsylvania, we would notify Pennsylvania," he said.
A 1996 law authorized agreements between local law enforcement and the federal immigration agency, but it wasn't until 2002 that the first policy was signed, according to ICE. Since then, 47 agreements, known as 287(g) pacts, have been signed nationwide and 700 officers have been trained to check the status of people stopped, arrested and detained.
The agreements generally contain two parts - permitting correctional officers to check the immigration status of anyone arrested and allowing officers to ask the immigration status of criminal suspects.
While the program is still small, demand for it is growing. The federal government had 90 pending requests from police agencies as of the end of April.
Last summer, Prince William County, Va., drew national attention when county leaders adopted a procedure requiring law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of everyone arrested or detained, even for traffic violations. Under fire from activists who said the program had become too costly, the county backed off somewhat, allowing officers to inquire about someone's immigration status only after an arrest.
Nationwide, many police chiefs and sheriffs have found themselves squeezed from both sides of the debate, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which released a study last month on local departments' views on enforcing immigration laws.
While rural areas and cities with a sudden surge in illegal immigration have adopted enforcement strategies, many urban police departments are reluctant to take on a role that has historically been a federal responsibility, Wexler said.
"If the police begin to alienate those communities in large urban areas, they run the risk of damaging the significant ties in community policing," he said. "At the same time, there is legitimate concern in some areas, where you have gang activity, some of which is from immigrant communities."
Still, Wexler said, there has been little solid research about the connection between illegal immigration and crime. While some police chiefs in the study said immigrants have worsened local crime problems, others said immigrants commit fewer crimes than natives.
Also unknown are the costs of increased enforcement and detention.
"We don't know the overall costs of this both in dollars and outcomes," he said. "There's the cost of housing in jails, but also the cost in unreported crime if these relationships are broken."
kelly.brewington@baltsun.com
