PC Interference Stalls a Little Progress with Immigration Police Work in LA

By Bill West

By now everyone should know that Los Angeles has a huge criminal alien problem. Many of those foreign hoods are gang members from Mexico and other Latin American countries, as well as Asian and other Pacific Rim nations, but also from countries as diverse as those in East Europe and the Middle East. At any given moment, thousands of these criminal aliens are in the criminal justice system of Los Angeles County, many as repeat offenders. Lately, there is mixed intelligence about some of these gangs being linked to Middle East terrorist organizations.

Getting a handle on this problem has vexed local law enforcement authorities for decades. Federal immigration officials have never had the situation under control. In the past, there have been a number of ad hoc task force attempts by what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and now the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to work with local police targeting foreign gangs and those efforts have met with some limited success, always to be stymied by a lack of resources or staying power on the part of the Feds, especially the INS at the time, due to a senior management structure that was dominated by non-law enforcement bureaucrats.

Identifying criminal aliens in the jails remains a priority consideration for both local authorities and the Feds. The sooner those foreign crooks can be identified in the system and earmarked for eventual deportation, the better. And, those who have already been deported may be subject to Federal felony prosecution for illegal reentry and face potential stiff Federal prison time�a potential incentive for the locals to cooperate in getting these suspects out of their system.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Los Angeles County Sheriff�s Department (LASD) in February announced a joint pilot project to train a limited number of LASD correctional deputies as Immigration Enforcement Officers. Late last month that pilot project was at least temporarily sidetracked when the Los Angeles County Sheriff unilaterally invited representatives of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) to sit in on what was supposed to be a law enforcement only training session under the pilot project. Read more about this matter in an article published today in FrontPage Magazine.

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