Las Vegas police: Focus is crime, not immigration enforcement
Striving to allay the fears of many local immigrants, a Metropolitan Police Department representative said Monday that his agency will continue to focus on fighting violent crime, not on immigration enforcement.
Jacinto Rivera, an officer with Metro’s Office of Community Engagement, tried to reassure a crowd of about 60 people gathered at the East Las Vegas Community Center, 250 N. Eastern Ave., that despite more rigorous enforcement mandates from the Trump administration, local law enforcement efforts will not change.
“The robberies, the homicides,” said Rivera. “That’s where I believe the community can be better served, by having this police department functioning and investigating those types of crimes.”
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, he said, “has been very clear in saying that our department will not turn into immigration agents.”
He added, “If you have a police officer that stops you for a traffic infraction, he or she will not be conducting an immigration investigation. (Police officers) will not be asking you about your status (or) if you have a green card. They will not be asking those types of questions.”
And if some reason they do ask, Rivera said, “you have the right not to answer the question.”
At the core of Monday’s discussion was an agreement known as 287(g) that Metro has had with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2008. Under ICE’s “delegated authority” program, the agreement allows local corrections officers to be deputized as immigration agents.
Metro renewed the 287(g) agreement last June, after the Obama administration had established deportation guidelines that made those convicted of serious crimes a priority.
Last month, however, the Trump administration issued a memorandum broadening the scope of federal immigration enforcement efforts. Now anyone who has been convicted of a crime — or even arrested for a crime — is at risk of deportation.
Also, Metro recently reversed course on a policy it had abandoned in 2014. At the time, it joined hundreds of cities and counties that stopped cooperating with immigration “detainers” — requests for local authorities to hold potentially deportable inmates for up to 48 hours, sometimes beyond the legal “probable cause” holding period.
The move by Metro and other localities came after a federal court ruling that an Oregon county had violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by holding her in jail without cause past her release date.
On Jan. 3, however, Metro began honoring detainer requests again, though with some policy changes, Metro officials said. The detainer requests now include language stating that they’re based on probable cause, and ICE agents have become more prompt about picking up undocumented immigrants from the county jail.
“At the end of the day,” said Amy Rose, ACLU of Nevada legal director, “they are still giving information about people in the community to ICE,” even if it’s in the limited context of the Clark County Detention Center.
“It’s very troubling that they want to continue that,” she said, “and I wish they wouldn’t, because I think they do such a good job of reaching out to the community. They have fantastic community policing … I wish they wouldn’t put out these mixed messages.”
Contact Lucy Hood at lhood@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2904. Follow @lucyahood on Twitter.
