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"It's an extremely complex issue, isn't it?"

Stopped by a reporter outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville, 48-year-old Bethesda resident Bill Kline mulled for the first time the county's recent decision to report the names of suspects charged with gun violations and most violent crimes to federal immigration agents.

While he could see the value in taking steps to keep hardened criminals off the streets, he believed that only comprehensive reform can get at the root of the country's illegal immigration "conundrum."

"The world is not black and white; it's gray," he said. "Here we have yet another gray situation where on the surface it seems like a great idea and yet when you apply it to a population that hasn't been treated fairly to begin with, it doesn't make sense."

In dozens of interviews across the county — at Westfield Wheaton mall, at a Starbucks in North Bethesda, outside Germantown's busiest shopping center — only a few interviewees knew details of what County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) ordered into practice Feb. 10. At best, interviewees had vague notions of a recent commotion; in several cases, they believed county police had been empowered to deport anyone they so chose.

Taken together, the interviews reflect ambivalence and an uneven mingling of emotion and reason underpinning one of Montgomery County's most divisive issues. After Leggett announced the new policy, he and county Police Chief J. Thomas Manger reached out through newspapers, television and radio stations.

Leaving the Germantown Library with her son Jonathan, 8, Germantown resident Julia Ceriotti was far from shy in recalling her reaction to the headlines, and the context in which she sees the treatment of immigrants: "Racism. That's racist. That's what I see."

Racial profiling is exactly what Leggett and Manger are trying to avoid in sending the names of all suspects arrested and charged with certain violent crimes to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If the process plays out as they expect, ICE will issue a hold if the suspect has an immigration violation, so that ICE would take them into custody pending the local trial. If convicted, the process would continue as it has for years: the suspect would serve their sentence and ICE would deport them.

"Well that's not so bad," Ceriotti said once the process was explained. "Actually, I don't know why I just went on that rant. Am I missing something? That doesn't sound very provocative. What is the debate about? … That sounds reasonable — right? I mean, you don't want dangerous felons with guns."

With two neighboring counties allowing officers to make immigration arrests, Leggett and Manger sought to counter the perception that Montgomery was wavering from its don't-ask-don't-tell approach — a perception held by many interviewees.

The policy has been met with wary acceptance by immigrant advocates, who worry that it is a precursor to stricter measures. Though encouraged by the shift, leaders of the county's anti-illegal immigrant groups continue to call for a more proactive approach.

None of The Gazette interviewees echoed that call for further reform.

"It's excellent," Potomac resident Benjamin Neal, 48, said after being reminded of the policy as he left the Rockville JCC.

"If people are here in the States, they need to abide by our laws and regulations," said Neal, whose fourth-grade son interviewed the family's African babysitter last week for a school assignment on immigration. "… People are entitled to some opportunity, but if they're repeat offenders, they really need to get back on the boat."

Taking a break at a North Bethesda Starbucks, cab driver Aklile Redie, 52, of Silver Spring, sympathized with all immigrants who are only trying to make a better life.

"It's not fair to do it that way, but if the person committed the crime, I mean, you got to go by the law," said Redie, who came to the United States from Ethiopia 30 years ago. "As an immigrant, I feel sorry for the people who are not having permits to work or to be a resident here. But at the same time, they're the ones who put themselves in that situation. And you see, police officers, he's protecting the public. … That's the way it got to be"

Trust is at the core of how the policy will be absorbed in immigrant communities, said Belkis Madrid, 14, of Rockville, one of about a dozen youths at Identity wrote letters to Leggett the week before his decision.

Now that the policy is in place, Belkis does not take issue with the worst criminals being targeted. But she worries over the trust of police she sees fading among her family, friends and other Latinos who think they might be caught up in a widening net.

"They're already afraid and now they're going to be more afraid," she said.

County officials and immigrant advocates are grappling with the fact that a lot of that fear is and will be driven by misunderstanding of the new policy. With "time to digest," and the drop in crime he expects them to see, Manger thinks immigrant communities will eventually warm.

"More than anything else [police need] to communicate more with Hispanics and more officers that speak Spanish," Bernarda Velasquez, 32, of Germantown said in Spanish.

Nothing is likely to persuade the immigrant community to like the change, said Vera Lora, 25, as she folded clothes with her roommate at J&J'S Coin Laundry on Veirs Mill Road.

"In reality people should support it," she said. "But that won't happen because they're always going to see it as discrimination."

In the end, the county's new policy "probably is sort of a wash" for Chevy Chase resident Vicki Walleschein, 54. On the one hand, she figures that most crime is committed by U.S. citizens. Yet she also sides with counties that are "a little stiffer" toward illegal immigration than Montgomery County.

"Is there a middle ground in what Montgomery has just passed? Probably. But you could probably argue the fine points of that the next 10 years," she said at a Starbucks on Connecticut Avenue. "That's the problem with these things. At a certain point, I think you need to make a decision, ‘Is there a problem,' and if there is, we obviously want to do something about it. I'm a liberal on very, very many issues — on things like crime, I'm not."

Everyone arrested and charged by county police with gun violations or committing or attempting

to commit the following crimes will have their names sent to federal immigration agents:

-Abduction, first-degree arson, kidnapping, voluntary manslaughter, mayhem, maiming, murder, rape, felony robbery, felony robbery with a weapon, carjacking, armed carjacking, first- and second-degree sex offense, handgun in a felony, first-degree child abuse, sex abuse of a minor if the victim is under 13 or if the offense involves genital touching. Also, immigration agents will receive the names of those arrested and charged with first-degree assault and assault with the intent to: murder, rape, rob, first-degree sex offense and second-degree sex offense.