Editorial: We need secure borders but latest bill aims at securing partisan advantage

Monday, June 17, 2019 -- The General Assembly wants to force sheriffs to participate in the controversial and voluntary 287 (g) program and detain suspected illegal immigrants. We suggest the legislature let the duly elected sheriffs make their own decisions about protecting public safety in their communities. Some believe that the program drives the immigrant community underground and isolates them -- resulting in an increase in criminal activity.

Posted 9:00 a.m. Jun 17, 2019 — Updated 12:37 a.m. Jun 19, 2019

CBC Editorial: Monday, June 17, 2019; Editorial #8432

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

We support secure borders. Our immigration laws should be obeyed. Foreigners who enter the United States and stay should do it legally.

There is also the fact that 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants reside in the United States. Many live in communities all across North Carolina. They own homes, have jobs, raise families (their American-born children are U.S. citizens), attend schools, pray at churches and pay taxes.

For years Congress has refused to deal with immigration reform, with legislators in both parties preferring to play politics rather than make tough choices and craft a solution.

We deported about 260,000 people last year.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) wants help from local law enforcement through the controversial 287(g) program. This voluntary program allows local law enforcement to check the immigration status of people arrested and hold them in jail for immigration agents, even if they have served their sentences or posted bond.

The General Assembly wants to force sheriffs to participate in the voluntary program.

Promotors of the legislation that has passed the state House and is set for a state Senate vote this week, want to force county sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration authorities and detain suspected illegal immigrants.

They claim it is about public safety and protection from serious and violent criminals.

“We’re hard-pressed to find anybody who believes serious criminals should be allowed to stay in the United States,” declared a news release distributed by Sen. Phil Berger that quotes state Senate backers of House Bill 370.

We agree that convicted serious criminals should be deported.

But we do suggest that the legislature let the duly elected sheriffs make their own decisions about protecting public safety in their communities.

They were elected and took oaths to do just that. Some believe that the 287(g) program drives the immigrant community underground and isolates them. They are properly concerned such a crackdown could result in an increase in criminal activity because of the ICE program.

The bill, like too many others, is more about election politics than obeying the law and keeping communities safe.

It couldn’t have been an accident that state Sen. Dan Bishop – the GOP candidate in the special Ninth Congressional District election -- last Tuesday made a campaign appearance in Charlotte. He called on Mecklenburg Sheriff Garry McFadden to resign over his decision to end participation in the controversial 287(g) program. The following day in Raleigh the bill was before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Legislative leaders have been crowing about support from the state Sheriffs’ Association. But that support is far from unanimous. Sheriffs who hold jurisdiction over more than a third of the state’s population oppose the bill. Several were elected on the promise that they would not participate in the 287(g) program. They say the current voluntary ICE detainers are not mandatory. Some courts have ruled they violate the Constitution.

"We haven't budged. We're not going to move," Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker said last week, six months after ending the county's participation in the 287(g) program. “We're here trying to make sure that our communities and everyone feels comfortable talking and calling us."

That’s his job. Legislators don’t need to tell him, or other county sheriffs, how to do it.