The N&R’s Lorraine Ahearn discusses the fear among illegal immigrants in Alamance County that they might be —gasp— deported. You’d think that would constantly be in the backs of their minds, but evidently they have new reason to be fearful. Gee.
At issue is Alamance’s new 240-bed jail, which will double the county’s prisoner capacity to a total of 486 inmates. In addition to the new jail, Alamance will also have a new 10-officer unit giving the sheriff’s department the cross-sworn authority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Considering the issues North Carolina faces with illegal immigration, this sounds like a good idea, right? Well, it depends whom you ask:
For jail planners, this merely represents good fiscal sense, and for law enforcement, the sharing of fingerprint databases with overworked customs agents. But to Hispanic immigrants, who now make up about
15 percent of the county’s 150,000 residents, it sends a different message : Go home.“This is planting fear in our community,” said Burlington resident Jose Luis Arzola, a volunteer counselor for the Institute for Mexican Foreign Nationals. “Not a day goes by that I don’t get a call, ‘The police are here checking people,’ or, ‘The police are there checking people.'”
Adolfo Briceno, who covers the region for Que Pasa, agreed: “This is all over the Hispanic community, but in Alamance, the level of awareness is a bit higher. The fact that you have a sheriff’s department where, if you ever go into jail they might deport you — well, people are going to stay home. And that’s bad for business.”
…Community advocates say they are all in favor of removing criminals. The fear, however, is that infractions that would be relatively minor for most people — failure to appear in court on a speeding ticket, for example, or neglecting to renew a driver’s license — would be enough to start the machinery of deportation.
So it’s too much to ask that illegal immigrants remain above the law in order to remain in the country?
Yes, I just actually asked that question.
