Broken immigration system needs repair

As law enforcement officers we cannot keep the peace while also causing disruption in our communities. I understand Congress is considering a bill that would ask local law enforcement to act on their own to enforce immigration laws (The Michael Davis, Jr. and Danny Oliver in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act,” H.R. 1148, earlier known as the “SAFE Act”). I would like to bring out three of several issues I find extremely challenging if this law passes.

The first one is economics. We do not have an infinite budget. There is a limited amount with which we are asked to do many things. No one knows for sure the exact number of undocumented persons in North Texas. But I am sure that no matter where they live in North Texas, they come through Dallas County quite often, perhaps daily.

{mosads}The estimated number of immigrants in North Texas without documentation is anywhere from 100,000 to 750,000. If my officers pick up 5 to 10 percent of them a year, we would end up dealing with anywhere from 1,000 to 75,000 more people a year. Where will I house them? I already have trouble housing the 6,000 inmates who are in the system daily.

At about $60 a day, holding them for 2 days, which is the average time that ICE takes to pick them up, would mean $120,000 to $900,000 of additional cost to my department. This is just for housing; this does not include the time and fuel expense for the officers to bring them into the system.

We have already found that calling and asking ICE to pick up individuals as we process them does not work. “ICE on demand” is not effective. Therefore, such an effort would cause great harm to our already strapped budget and create a burden on Dallas County taxpayers.

The second setback is how harmful this would be to the community. It has taken long years and hard work to build trust. I would prefer that our uniforms invoke trust, not fear. “Serve and Protect” has been our motto for many years, and our “Serve and Protect” services are for all.

I don’t want the community’s first interaction with our officers to be a time of fear. That is why I assign our officers time in the community for ribbon cutting, fairs, and other community events. Then if our officers are called out for any kind of police activities, it will not be the first time that community sees them.

A lot of undocumented individuals came from areas where they can’t trust the police. The uniform has pushed them into the shadows. Good law enforcement cannot be carried out this way. Everyone should know that they can report a crime, provide intel on crimes, be a witness, and most of all, not be in fear of the police if they are a victim of a crime.

The third issue is that this type of law provides an easy road to singling out a group of people. North Texas residents speak at least 239 languages. Although we have undocumented individuals from many countries including Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Finland and others, I can almost assure you that they will not be the individuals most often stopped. How can you tell whether someone is undocumented or a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident who knows and enjoys speaking more than one language?

Do we just approach individuals based on how they appear to us, the area they live in, or where they shop? How many U.S. citizens would we offend or make upset with us? What agitation would result in immigrant communities? We have seen what singling out a group did in Ferguson, Missouri. We need commonsense law enforcement that protects and assists in crime solutions, not that divides us from a community.

As an elected sheriff of one of the largest counties in the nation, I think I get votes because I try to do the correct thing and to be fair about it. This does not please everyone, but does continue a decent quality of life in our area. And it’s challenging enough even without inherently disruptive immigration policy.

No matter what happens in immigration, someone will be upset. There is no way to please all involved. But the federal government should not put law enforcement in a situation that would be costly to us in many different ways.

Valdez is sheriff of Dallas County, Texas.