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Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney Wants State Troopers to Arrest Illegals
Mitt Romney wants the feds to OK his plan for Massachusetts state police officers to have the authority to arrest illegal immigrants solely on their immigration status. "It's one more thing you can do to make this a less attractive place for illegal aliens to come to work," the Massachusetts governor said. "I think that's a good thing," said Representative Marie J. Parente, a Milford Democrat whose community has enacted licensing regulations that make it more difficult for undocumented immigrants to settle there. "We need to do something," Parente told the Boston Globe. "I think that will be a message, that the state of Massachusetts welcomes you if you're within the law."
The state legislature would have to approve the arrangement Romney is seeking, and the plan has many critics. Cambridge, Mass. has already declared itself a safe haven for illegals, and Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts claimed: "This will overwhelm the State Police force, it will hinder real law enforcement, real community law enforcement, and it clearly will lead to racial and ethnic profiling. That's not effective law enforcement, or effective immigration policy."
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The first deal of this kind was struck in 1996. Florida, Alabama and a few counties in California and North Carolina have similar compacts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has trained state officers to enforce immigration laws.
Spokesman for Gov. Romney Eric Fehrnstrom told the Globe that, as of now, Mass. state troopers can detain an illegal immigrant only if their status is discovered through an arrest for a violation of state law, and only if officials from the central U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Vermont request it.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has received so many requests for this kind of cooperative policing arrangement that the Department of Homeland Security "is working with a dozen government entities to craft memoranda of understandings tailored to their needs, said Mike Gilhooly, communications director for the department's New England division," writes the Globe.
Gilhooly added that the feds are happy to have the extra law enforcement aid. "It's a force multiplier," he said. The officers "are enforcing immigration law in the course of their duties," Gilhooly said, disagreeing with the ACLU's characterization of the extra burden on state troopers. "They are not involved in major immigration operations on a daily basis. They are performing their duties, and when they encounter immigration violations or criminals who are illegal aliens, they can and do take action." Editor's note:
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