Progressives should emphasize that we do not improve public safety by making immigrants afraid to cooperate with the police or anti-terror authorities. States should condemn turning every police officer or, even worse, every social worker into a potential immigration enforcement agent, because it undermines community policing and other known effective law enforcement approaches.
Rhode Island's HB 5237 [1] and New Hampshire's HB 404 [2] would prohibit the use of state and local law enforcement agencies for the purpose of detecting or apprehending persons whose only violation of law is that they are persons of foreign citizenship who are in violation of federal immigration laws.
Hysteria over immigrants encourages racial profiling by law enforcement, so proposals like Texas HB 2428 [3] / SB 150 [4] would prohibit law enforcement profiling based on a person's immigration or nationality status.
See also:
- National Immigration Law Center, Laws, Resolutions, and Policies Instituted Across the U.S. Limiting Enforcement of Immigration Laws by State and Local Authorities [5] (updated April 2008)
- Major Cities Chiefs Statement on Immigration [6]- Police chiefs statement on need for separation of local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement
- Appleseed, Forcing Our Blues into Gray Areas: Local Police and Federal Immigration Enforcement [7]
- Vera Institute of Justice, Strengthening Relations between Police and Immigrants [8] and Building Strong Police-Immigrant Community Relations: Lessons from a New York City Project [9]
- CAUSA, Collaboration with federal immigration enforcement hurts community policing [10]
- USA Today, Chiefs, mayors order local cops: Leave catching illegal immigrants to the feds [11]
- National Immigration Forum, Police in "New Immigrant" States Say Asking Them to Enforce Immigration Laws Would Harm Public Safety [12]