Posted on 06/29/2006 1:50:17 PM PDT by BradtotheBone
Houston police would have to start enforcing federal immigration laws or potentially lose millions in crime-fighting money under a local lawmaker's measure that passed the House today.
An appropriations bill that cleared the House contains an amendment by Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, that would cut off federal law enforcement funds to cities that have what Culberson characterizes as "sanctuary policies" for illegal immigrants.
The measure will not become law unless it clears the Senate and is signed by President Bush.
Houston — which announced an $18 million federal crime-fighting grant about the time the bill passed the House — meets Culberson's definition because police do not ask the immigration status of residents they stop or detain
Stupid. Cops have better things to do than chase illegals around Huston all day.
Thoughts?
ping
Excellent news! Enforcing current immigration laws, good concept.
"Stupid. Cops have better things to do than chase illegals around Huston all day."
Isn't chasing, and hopefully catching, "illegals" i.e. people who have broken the law, what police are supposed to do?
checking immigration status pursuant to an arrest . what's wrong with that?
if DOJ stats are true that 29% of prison population are illegals, it makes sense.
Police need a bill before they'll do their jobs? Where's the public outcry?
Because every arrest takes a cop off of the street for an hour or more and saddles him with arrest paperwork. Cops should be solving real crimes instead of doing the INS' job for them.
It's not their job, it's the INS' job.
Like setting up speed traps to ticket senior citizens, right?
MSM will not bring it up.
Oh of course, they are the city of immgrants x2.
What else is new?
Take a look at the 'Most Wanted' lists, sometime, and consider it time well spent.
If you want cops to do the INS' job in addition to their normal job, then get ready for a big, juicy bump in your property taxes to pay for all of the extra officers that they'll need to handle the increased call load, and another big bump to pay for the detention and court costs of dealing with them.
see here: ICE= Feds: there job is to catch illegals. local police=state/local crimes + local criminals: turn them over to ICE pursuant to legal stops and/or arrests.
local police are arguing they're being stuck with an unfunded mandate. I can sort of see their point IF they are being tasked strictly to chase after illegals rather than turning them over to ICE pursuant to an arrest or stop with reasonable suspicion. long story short- there should be no such thing as "sanctuary cities".
Here in Minneapolis we've had a big spike in violent crime over the last couple of years, and due to budgetary shortfalls we're about 100 officers short of where we need to be. I'd rather the cops deal with the gangs and murderers first and the guy who does cheap drywall second.
Maybe not, if it works to prevent leftist administrators and politicians from ordering police to ignore illegals, it might be a good thing.
Here in San Franscicko, Kaliforniastan, a cop loses his job if he enforces against or informs on illegals. Thats how they force cops and all other city/county employees to go along.
Even if the cops were able to just slow down the car and dump the illeagals outside of the local ICE office, it would still take a chunk of time out of their already busy days to do it. And don't tell me that there wouldn't be some sort of arrest and processing paperwork on the city/county/state end.
You want to arrest more illegals? Vote for guys who will hire more ICE officers and put them on the trail. Don't saddle your local police with the responsibility and then whine when the crime rate goes up.
"REAL CRIMES?"
Excuse me? Didn't know that entering this country illegally had been deemed NOT unlawful?
Oh what to hell, we already have 12-20 million "undocumented immigrants," what's another million here and there.
Let them be, already, and lets not have ANY LEA do the job they were hired (and swore an oath) to do; serve and protect--which includes arresting those who have broken the law. /sarc
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