Border Police, Community Meet on Immigration

“This isn’t the situation we were expecting from the (Obama) administration.” - Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network,

Map of the Paso del Norte Region (Ciudad Juárez, Doña Ana, Otero, El Paso, and Hudspeth Counties)

(LAS CRUCES, N.M.) - In an unusual encounter, police chiefs from the Paso del Norte region of the US-Mexico borderland met with community members this past weekend to discuss immigration, racial profiling, identity cards, Arizona’s SB 1070 law, use of lethal force, and overall police-community relationships.

Organized by the Border Network for Human Rights, a large crowd turned out to El Paso’s Plaza Theater June 12 to hear out the officials.

Vicky Gaubeca, event co-moderator and director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Regional Center for Border Rights, said the passage of the Arizona immigration law and other developments had stirred community interest in clarifying how local law enforcement treats immigrants and views immigration laws.

Setting the tone of the meeting, El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said it wasn’t the responsibility of his department to enforce federal immigration laws.

“It breaks down the trust and respect of you, our partners in the community,” Wiles contended, to the enthusiastic applause of an audience drawn from El Paso and southern New Mexico. According to Wiles, the United States is a patchwork of federal, state and local laws with different sets of legal codes having their own reach and enforcement responsibilities.

Joining Wiles on the panel were Todd Garrison, sheriff of neighboring Dona Ana County, New Mexico; Peter Bradley, the retiring police chief of Las Cruces, New Mexico; Richard Williams, the incoming police chief of Las Cruces; and Ed Miranda, police chief of Anthony, Texas.

Garrison argued that cooperation between the police and residents in the interest of public safety was the bottom line, regardless of immigration status. He cited a case in which his department attempted to get a deported witness who could testify about the kidnap and rape of a woman by an undocumented suspect back into the country.

“We have unique challenges,” the sheriff said. Staffed with about 140 officers, Garrison’s department covers a huge county three times the size of Rhode Island that encompasses remote areas along the Mexican border, widely scattered rural communities and farming belts like the Hatch Valley which depend on migrant labor from south of the border. Currently, Dona Ana County is back-logged with 8,000 outstanding warrants, according to Garrison. In a fiscally-challenged era, even municipal police in the county seat are stretched thin, said Las Cruces Police Chief Williams. Arriving on the job just days ago, the former New Mexico State Police official said he was struck one evening how officers had 13 pending calls to answer. “We don’t have the resources to handle even the ongoing criminal matters out there,” Williams added. “To try to pull us into the immigration business is something we can’t do.”

Action by Washington lawmakers resulting in a simplified process of obtaining citizenship, Williams suggested, would help bring people out of the shadows and encourage cooperation with law enforcement.

Offering testimonies of threatened or actual deportation, family break-up and economic hardship, several community members pressed the panel to explain their agencies’ policies on handling immigration status. Multiple accounts focused on the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office. For instance, Las Cruces resident Albert Lino recounted how an officer threatened to turn over Lino’s wife to immigration authorities after she had trouble responding in English during a traffic stop.

In reaction to the testimonies, Garrison said it was the first time he had heard of the incidents. In an interview with Frontera NorteSur after the forum, Garrison stressed how it was frustrating to hear of such stories months after-the-fact and important for people to contact his office immediately with any matters requiring an internal investigation.

“I learned long ago, I don’t take one side of the story.” Garrison said.

Other panelists urged people with complaints to step forward. Retiring Las Cruces Police Chief Bradley said his department’s internal affairs unit is even willing to document denunciations in a more comfortable setting outside the police station. “We investigate every complaint that comes across our desk,” he insisted.

The police chiefs acknowledged that immigration authorities will be called if a law enforcement contact involves a criminal issue. “We know the vast majority of people who come to this country are decent, law-abiding people who want a better chance at life,” Wiles said, adding that a only small minority comes to break drug, human trafficking and other laws. “We don’t want criminals here, whether they are undocumented or not,” he said.

Like Dona Ana County, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office participates in the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Stonegarden, a program which encourages and funds multi-agency law enforcement cooperation in the US-Mexico borderlands. Wiles said his department received a Stonegarden grant of just over one million dollars, but made sure it deleted enforcement of immigration law from the application.

Responsible for running the county jail, the El Paso Sheriff’s Office also participates in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Secure Communities program aimed at identifying undocumented law-breakers eligible for deportation. According to Wiles, suspects booked into the jail have their fingerprints bounced off an ICE computer. However, checks won’t be run for traffic violations or minor offenses like disorderly conduct, he said.

Roadblocks and Racial Profiling

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network, asked the law enforcement chiefs to comment on a common impression that police roadblocks target poor Hispanic communities while letting “country club” communities off the hook. In response, Garrison said road blocks are common on public roads but his officers don’t have access to gated communities built along private roads.

Defending the use of roadblocks as a valuable law enforcement tool, Williams recalled a time when he was with the New Mexico State Police and officers set up a five-hour checkpoint in Interstate 10 in southern New Mexico that netted dozens of arrests for DWI, minor in possession of alcohol and drug offenses. But when the Border Patrol showed up, Williams continued, he asked them to leave.

Anti-racial profiling laws are on the books in Texas and New Mexico, and the agencies represented at the El Paso forum employ officer training, diversity standards, video-cameras on police vehicles and other techniques to favor equal treatment of residents, according to the panelists.

Anthony Police Chief Ed Miranda gave detailed explanations of the racial profiling policy adopted by his department. Miranda heads a force of 16 officers in the small town just north of El Paso that borders New Mexico and is the site of the La Tuna federal prison. A crossroads of truckers, drug traffickers and small-time gangsters, Anthony has seen its share of problems. According to Miranda, he took over a “corrupt and abusive” police force in 2003 that was discredited by a “handful” of officers who engaged in racial profiling and “inappropriate” behaviors.

Seven years later, a vastly improved climate of cooperation exists between police and community, Miranda asserted. “We have come a long way,” he said. Based on systematic compilation of traffic stop data, annual reports on racial profiling are submitted to the city council and shared with the League of United Latin American Citizens, Miranda added. To avoid profiling at routine roadblocks, Miranda said his officers are instructed to stop every third or fourth car and not base a check on a person’s appearance.

Washington’s Warped Border The El Paso forum happened at a critical time in the borderlands. Tensions between Mexico and the United States are on the rise after the deaths of two Mexican nationals, including 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez of Ciudad Juarez, following encounters with the US Border Patrol.

The Border Patrol incidents inflamed an atmosphere already super-charged by the ongoing drug violence in Mexico, the murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, approval of the Arizona immigration law, the pending deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops and media coverage that portrays the US-Mexico border as an out-of-control no-man’s land.

Hailing from a family with six generations in the region, Garrison said spill-over issues of drug trafficking and occasional acts of violence certainly occur in Dona Ana County but not on the scale of the blood-letting and shoot-outs that occur every day in neighboring Ciudad Juarez. “It’s not happening,” he told Frontera NorteSur.

Wiles said he was “disgusted” with the tone of the national debate on immigration, and blasted Washington for pursuing ‘short-sighted” actions to shut down the border in return for votes. He defended El Paso as the second safest large city in the US, and one that functions well because of the ethnic diversity and cultural richness of the community. Again to the audible and visible delight of the audience, Wiles declared he was glad to live in El Paso.

Satisfied with the forum’s outcome, Border Network leader Garcia said the gathering could serve as a step in bringing community concerns before federal agencies charged with enforcing immigration and border security laws. Overall, Garcia warned, the climate on immigration and border issues is worsening. “Things are going backwards,” he said. “This isn’t the situation we were expecting from the (Obama) administration.”

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico