Bill would allow state police to enforce immigration law

EuP · #1 (**permalink**) 12-17-2004, 09:40 AM

Bill would allow state police to enforce immigration law

Arkansas State Police officers could be trained to enforce immigration law under a bill prefiled for the upcoming legislative session.

The training is offered by the federal Department of Homeland Security. House Bill 1012 by Reps. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, Timothy Chad Hutchinson, R-Lowell, and Michael Lamoureux, R-Russellville, would authorize the state police to send troopers to that training.

The Hutchinsons are brothers and nephews of Asa Hutchinson, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security will "pay for the training, which takes five or six weeks," Timothy Hutchinson said in an interview Thursday.

"We introduced this bill because every member of the Arkansas congressional delegation is trying to get more federal immigration agents and another office into the 3rd Congressional District, and haven't been able to," Hutchinson said. "The result is that a police officer who makes a stop and then finds reason to believe that the person he stopped might be in the country illegally has to call the federal office in Fort Smith, which doesn't have enough manpower. Fort Smith will often say they can't send anybody.

"This way, the law enforcement officer could call the local state police troop and get someone to come out," Hutchinson said.

The training from Homeland Security includes training in civil rights, and avoiding abuse of those rights, Hutchinson said. "Anybody who abuses this authority would not only have that authority taken away, he would also probably be fired as a state trooper," Hutchinson said.

Alabama has fully implemented the program and Florida is in the process of adopting it, Hutchinson said.

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