Emotions high over police, immigrants

Debate boils as Leggett, Manger feel force of deportation

That meeting was followed 30 minutes later by a with County Executive Isiah Leggett. Lawmakers and immigrant advocates argued that police should disregard the federal warrants, saying they are civil matters that should be left to federal authorities.

The county chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said it will begin tracking immigration arrests again after stopping two years ago.

And despite the concerted efforts to explain that police are not acting as immigration agents, fear and distrust of police among Latinos is at its highest point in 20 years, said Officer Luis Hurtado, a police liaison to the Latino community.

A matter of law

Like nearly all police departments across the nation, when county police make a traffic stop or other routine inquiry, they usually run a background check, including a search of the National Crime Information Center’s database, which includes federal immigration warrants. If the person has such a warrant, in many cases issued because of a missed deportation hearing, county police alert federal agents.

Last year, county police held 65 people on immigration warrants. So far this year, police have made 22 such arrests.

Police could not say how many of last year’s detentions were based solely on the immigration warrants — also called civil detainers — or how many faced criminal charges.

Immigration warrants do not constitute criminal charges, said County Attorney Leon Rodriguez. They are procedural orders from federal administrators, and Montgomery is ‘‘examining what our obligations are” in complying with the warrants, Rodriguez said in a phone interview on Tuesday morning.

‘‘They’re certainly not criminal. What is in there are not warrants in the classical sense of a bench warrant issued by a judge,” he said. ‘‘It is a matter of some controversy as to what those regulations actually require.”

But after Thursday’s closed-door meeting, Leggett (D) said he would not make any changes.

‘‘To go and unilaterally decide we are going to ignore warrants that are there, I don’t think that’s appropriate at this time,” he said.

Included in the meeting were County Councilman Mark Elrich (D-At large) of Takoma Park; Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Dist. 18) of Chevy Chase; Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa of Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group; and Mike Mage, co-chairman of the county ACLU chapter.

A matter of fear

Immigrant advocates say enforcing the warrants is making victims and witnesses of crimes less willing to cooperate with police for fear of being deported. And as tensions have mushroomed in recent months, fear has given way to rumor and misinformation.

‘‘They’ve been afraid, but the confusion now is huge,” Officer Hurtado said.

The debate over enforcing the federal warrants comes on the heels of the controversy surrounding county-funded day-laborer centers and state discussions on issuing driver’s licenses and providing in-state college tuition to illegal residents.

As the debate widens, many have spoken against providing county services and benefits to people who are here illegally.

Tension erupted at Manger’s Latino Advisory Committee meeting on Thursday. Susan Payne, an outspoken critic of the policies that help illegal residents, and Gutierrez, an ardent supporter of the Latino community, disputed the merits of the current policy.

Manger cut in, saying it would be ‘‘unethical” for police to choose which warrants to enforce.

‘‘Are we required to take these folks into custody? Well, there’s legal arguments on both sides,” he said. ‘‘It comes down to a policy issue, and I take responsibility on this.”

Manger said he is ‘‘heartsick” over how the arrests have affected the immigrant community, but he said he cannot ‘‘in good conscience” tell his officers not to enforce the warrants.

‘‘If so, I am out of a job,” he said. ‘‘Get a new police chief when that happens.”

Manger has no plans to resign, he said later. ‘‘That sort of flew out of my mouth.”

Like many police chiefs, Manger wants the federal government to take the warrants out of the NCIC database. The warrants began to be added in 2002.

Since then, county officers have not had an explicit, written set of directives to follow. The police manual has not been updated since 1998.

Police do not have to charge someone with a crime in order to run their name through the NCIC. And while police are not required to check the database to issue minor criminal citations such as jaywalking and speeding, ‘‘95 percent of the time we do,” Hurtado said.

In the absence of specific guidelines, police follow what Hurtado called the ‘‘unwritten rule” of automatically taking people with immigration warrants to the county’s detention center on Seven Locks Road, where the Department of Corrections calls to see if federal agents want to deport the detainee.

‘‘Until that gets clarified, officers are going to keep doing it,” Hurtado said.

The police manual will be updated this year, Manger said at the Gaithersburg meeting last week.

Time to regroup

The ACLU is among the groups that want the county to specify what the manual will and will not say about immigration warrants, said the ACLU’s Mage.

‘‘Our client is not an undocumented person,” he said. ‘‘Our client is the Bill of Rights, and these rights need to be defended for all people.”

He said the group stopped monitoring immigration arrests in 2005 after assurances from police that there was not a problem, but decided to resume the practice after a Gazette report in March.

Leggett, a former professor of constitutional law, heard the ACLU’s case in his meeting and agreed that there are no ‘‘statutory problems” with exploring changes, spokesman Patrick K. Lacefield said Monday.

‘‘But 18,000 police departments in the country are doing essentially the same thing we are,” he said. ‘‘In terms of the way the county is dealing with immigration-related issues, we certainly have an approach that is balanced best the way it is.”

Latino leaders must regroup and make clear exactly what they want, said Henry Montes, co-chairman of Leggett’s Latin American Advisory Committee.

‘‘We need to know what the nature of these arrests are before we come to decisions about things one way or another,” he said.

The fight is not over, said Casa’s Torres.

‘‘We believe that we can change their minds,” he said.