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Alabama State Police join feds to tackle immigration

Published Tuesday, November 27 2007 - (0) Comments

When Alabama state trooper Darryl Zuchelli stopped a van going 18 mph over the speed limit on a routine patrol two months ago, he quickly became part of the federal governmentâ€™s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

A report by Stateline.org says two of the five people in the van were from India and had overstayed their allotted time in the United States. The trooper worked with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Birmingham, Ala., more than 700 miles from the nearest international border, to start deportation proceedings against the two that night.

Zuchelli is one of 56 Alabama troopers to receive special training and high-tech tools from the U.S. government to determine whether criminal suspects are in the country legally. Alabama was only the second state to partner with ICE when it signed up in 2003, following Florida.

Now the partnership known as the 287 (g) program is skyrocketing in popularity â€" 34 state and local law enforcement agencies in 15 states are on board and another 77 have applied. The program offers one of the few ways states and localities can help crack down on illegal immigration, a federal duty.

But deputizing local officers to help enforce federal immigration laws draws critics who question whether it could hamper police officersâ€™ ability to do their core duties, because it could scare immigrants off from reporting crime and could lead to racial profiling. Those concerns are a big reason the program has been a politically loaded issue in some areas.

In Alabama, the specially trained officers work both on the road and in driverâ€™s license facilities. Combating license fraud was one of the main reasons Alabama authorities were interested in the program, said Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Martha Earnhardt.

The licensing division runs a criminal background check on every applicant, and the ICE training helps the office screen for even more offenders, she said. The agency arrests 4,000 people a year who apply for licenses, for offenses ranging from fraud to child abuse to murder.

Zuchelli, a 32-year-old who led Alabama state troopers with the most drunken driving arrests last year (129), said the immigration training makes him a better police officer with the added incentive that â€œI may be able to take out a terrorist before he does something else to us.â€

But activists for immigrants are wary.

â€œI donâ€™t see how states and localities can enforce immigration law without engaging in racial profiling. The people they ask to prove their immigration status or citizenship are the people who look or sound foreign,â€ said Joan Friedland, immigration policy director for the National Immigration Law Center, a group that supports immigrant rights.

Alabama state police say theyâ€™ve worked with immigrant communities and civil rights groups to try to allay fears about the program, particularly about racial profiling.

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