Police Need Deportation Power, Immigration Foes Say

NEWPORT BEACH — Frustrated at their diminishing clout in Washington, D.C., seven of the nation’s fiercest opponents of illegal immigration warned Thursday of a popular uprising if drastic steps aren’t taken soon to arrest and deport large numbers of undocumented people.

Raising the specter of a “citizen militia” taking immigration matters into its own hands, Dan Stein, executive director of the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, said Thursday police officers must be given authority to enforce immigration laws.

“It means the difference between solving this problem and business as usual,” he said at a press conference here. “If we don’t do this, the only thing left is self-help.”

Stein, followed by a half-dozen speakers representing anti-immigration groups from Los Angeles to San Diego, said the federal government should immediately train local and state police officers in immigration laws, which is authorized by a new law.

Stein said the federation will pressure all Orange County police departments to seek such training, and a national campaign will follow.

Stein complained of a “lack of leadership” in Congress and said members are less willing to take on illegal immigration than they were a few years ago, when the issue gained national prominence and was championed by Gov. Pete Wilson and others.

“The government is headed for a direct confrontation with its constituents on this issue,” said Bill King, a former Border Patrol supervisor who helped write Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigration initiative that passed in 1994 but is held up in court.

The head of the countywide association of police chiefs opposed the federation’s idea, saying it could ruin good relations between police and the community. Also, the training would be costly and could tie up an officer for several months. “That doesn’t sound like a prudent use of police resources to me,” said Steven H. Stavely, La Habra police chief and president of the Orange County Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Association.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Laguna Niguel, said the agency already has a “high level of cooperation” with local police departments and stations agents at county jails throughout Southern California. Last year, 11,000 illegal immigrants were returned to their home countries through the jail program, she said.

“We removed over a million people last year, between voluntary returns and formal deportations,” she said. “That’s a staggering number. We are doing our job.”

At least one local law enforcement group--the Anaheim Police Officers Association--favors making immigration-related arrests, said association president Harald Martin, who spoke at the news conference. But he conceded he doesn’t even have the support of his own chief. “The bureaucrats are afraid of this,” he said. “They’re afraid of being called racist.”

Glenn Spencer, director of the Los Angeles-based Voice of Citizens Together, told reporters that conservative cities will “deputize” police officers to deport illegal immigrants, and “you will have illegal aliens concentrated in liberal areas such as Los Angeles.”