Gregory D.

Lee

Read Greg's bio and previous columns here

June 9, 2008

Local Cops Should Enforce Immigration Laws

Ask any U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent about his job, and he or she will tell you that the vast majority of people they investigate and arrest for drug trafficking are primarily criminal illegal aliens from Mexico.

Having spent half my 20-year career with the DEA assigned to the Los Angeles division, I arrested my share of Mexican nationals. On one of the few occasions I arrested a Caucasian American citizen, other agents walking by the holding cell did double takes when they saw him. That’s how rare it is for the DEA to arrest an American citizen for major drug trafficking.

Please don’t misunderstand; Mexican nationals don’t have a monopoly on U.S drug trafficking. I’ve worked cases involving Cubans, Iranians, Venezuelans, Thais, Chinese, Cambodians, Nigerians, Frenchmen, Britons, Canadians, Pakistanis, Afghans, Israelis, Bolivians and, of course Colombians, who control the cocaine trade. But the overwhelming number of Mexican nationals I arrested far exceeded all others combined.

Once I posed undercover as a drug trafficker to negotiate the purchase of two kilograms of black tar heroin from a Mexican illegal alien. The suspect proudly told me he was the nephew of Rafael Caro-Quintero, the drug cartel leader who kidnapped, tortured and brutally murdered DEA special agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena while he was on diplomatic assignment to Mexico in 1985. When the man delivered the heroin to me, he was arrested, and we served a search warrant at his home where he had a loaded gun. His Mexican wife, also an illegal alien, was briefly detained and released. When it came close to the trial date, the man’s defense attorney actually offered to have his client plead guilty if the government wouldn’t deport his wife. That speaks volumes about the lack of respect for our immigration laws back then. The man later unconditionally pled guilty.

What struck me about that case, and many others I’ve worked, is that Mexican national drug traffickers will sometimes personally return to Mexico to pick up the drugs and return to the U.S. the next day, or would make a phone call to have an associate smuggle the drugs into the U.S. for them. This illustrates how porous our borders are.

As a DEA supervisor in Santa Ana, California, my office almost exclusively worked illegal alien Mexican national drug traffickers who sell the vast majority of methamphetamine in this country. An Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) special agent assigned to the group, who was supposed to handle the illegals we encountered, was so overwhelmed with work he became ineffective.

After encountering illegal aliens time and time again, I told my agents that the next time we did a search warrant and there were uninvolved illegals present, we were going to arrest them for immigration violations, even though it wasn’t in our investigative purview. As federal agents, we could arrest anyone for a federal violation committed in our presence. My plan was to arrest and immediately transport illegal aliens to the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint located just south of Santa Ana. Without exception, friends, relatives, wives and paramours of these suspects were arrested and handed over to the Border Patrol that day, and by that night, they were on a bus back in Tijuana.

My worst nightmare was mistakenly detaining a U.S. citizen and sending him back to Tijuana just like in the movie, Born in East L.A. with Cheech Marin. INS agents weren’t very happy with what we were doing, because we were essentially doing their job. They told me I should back off since immigration law was so complex.  

How complex can it be? I asked everyone we detained if they were citizens, had a green card, held a U.S. visa, was eligible for immunity or was an asylum seeker. When the answer was no to every question, they were arrested. Without exception, the detainee admitted being here illegally and viewed the arrest as a minor inconvenience. Border Patrol agents told me that about half of those we arrested had prior arrests for illegal entry, yet the U.S. attorney would never prosecute.

Every local police officer should have authority to question a person’s immigration status during the normal performance of their duties and make arrests for federal immigration violations when appropriate.

It’s time for Congress to fund immigration law training for local law enforcement and mandate they enforce its provisions. Those states and “sanctuary cities” that refuse should be cut off of all federal funding until they go along with the program. Doing so would be a manpower multiplier for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. It would have a significant impact on crime in our local communities and make millions of jobs available for deserving Americans.  

Gregory D. Lee is a retired DEA Supervisory Special Agent and nationally syndicated columnist. He can be reached through his website: www.gregorydlee.com.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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