US immigration agents find ways around 'sanctuary' policies
Source: Associated Press
US immigration agents find ways around sanctuary policies
By ASTRID GALVAN
March 14, 2019
PHOENIX (AP) Two years after New Mexicos largest county barred local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration authorities, its leaders learned that the policy was being subverted from within.
Staff members at the Bernalillo County jail in Albuquerque were still granting immigration authorities access to its database and, in some cases, tipping them off when a person of interest was being released.
I was surprised and horrified, said Maggie Hart Stebbins, chairwoman of the Bernalillo County Commission. Individual employees do not have the freedom to pick and choose what they want to observe.
The disclosure last month cast a spotlight on an often-overlooked way in which immigration officials around the U.S. may be getting around local sanctuary policies through informal relationships with police and others willing to cooperate when theyre not supposed to. Immigration activists say they have seen it places like Philadelphia, Chicago and several communities in California, which has a statewide sanctuary law.
On Wednesday, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that emails show that a detective in Orange County, California, regularly looked up license plate information for an immigration officer.
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