LITTLE ROCK — Police in Arkansas haven't been tracking the immigration status of suspected criminals as much as police in neighboring states do.
Figures obtained from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement reveal that Arkansas law enforcement officials are much less likely to check whether a suspect is in the state legally, according to an analysis by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
The federal entity responsible for policing the nation's borders received more than 728,000 queries from police through the agency's Law Enforcement Support Center in the federal fiscal year that ended Oct. 1, 2007.
Only 218 of those were sent by law enforcement agencies in Arkansas.
Comparing that with the state's Hispanic population of 138,283, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 estimate, police in Arkansas filed one query with LESC for every 634 "Hispanic or Latino" residents.
According to the Census Bureau, "Hispanics or Latinos" are those people who "classified themselves in one of the specific Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino categories listed on the Census 2000 questionnaire" as well as those who indicate that they are "other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino."
By comparison, Mississippi, with slightly more than 46,000 "Hispanic or Latino" residents in 2006, generated 3,586 queries, or one for every 12 Hispanic residents.
California posted the most,with 159,393 queries, or one for every 52 Hispanic residents in the state.
For the states surrounding Arkansas, there were:
638 queries in Louisiana, one for every 193 Hispanic residents,
10,342 queries in Tennessee, one for every 18 Hispanic residents,
2,589 queries in Missouri, one for every 62 Hispanic residents,
1,260 queries in Oklahoma, one for every 194 Hispanic residents, and
39,739 queries in Texas, one for every 211 Hispanic residents.
Jeffrey Walker, a criminal justice professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, is a former criminal investigator in the military who has studied community changes and their impact on crime since the early 1990s.
He suggested two possible explanations for the difference between Arkansas and neighboring states.
"The first one is strictly logistical, and that is that Arkansas is still not very wired," Walker said. "We've still got places where there is one [Arkansas Crime Information Center] terminal and that is it.
"I think there are a lot of places out there where law enforcement is not using the technology," he said. "It's not that they're not dealing with the people - they're just not making the queries."
One of the agencies "out there"is the Polk County Sheriff's Office in Mena, where Sheriff Mike Oglesby says his officers haven't noticed a particular crime issue related to illegal aliens.
"I don't have a super-large [Hispanic] population, but what we do have is in the south part of the county - in the Grannis and Wickes areas - where we have a Tyson plant," said Oglesby, estimating that between the two towns there may be about 500 Hispanic residents in the county.
"If we find somebody that doesn't have an ID and are causing problems, we'll call Immigration," said Oglesby. "But we've only had to do that one or two times in the past several years."
Walker suggested that officers are more focused on their primary role of policing the community and don't want to bother with what they see as a federal function.
"Another explanation is that police officers here are just not necessarily all that bent out of shape about illegal aliens," Walker said. "They're dealing with people and they either commit crimes or they don't commit crimes.
"For all law enforcement, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish," he said. "If I'm driving down the street and I see a guy I suspect of being an illegal alien, I can pull him over and I can call ICE and they will eventually show up.
"But, I've got other things to do, so I may not be all that interested in ratting somebody around," he said.
A spokesman for ICE said the LESC query system is not a secretto police agencies.
"The service is here, it's well known or else we wouldn't have 728,000 inquiries," said ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooly.
"We provide a service which is available for all law enforcement nationwide," Gilhooly said. "Why an agency chooses to use us or chooses not to is not something we have any control over."
Gilhooly said he would not identify which agencies in Arkansas filed the queries.
The problem of illegal immigration has been primarily focused in northwest Arkansas, where local and federal law enforcement officials say the bulk of crime committed by illegal aliens involves drug trafficking, human trafficking, fraud or conspiracy.
As a result, several law enforcement agencies in Northwest Arkansas have sent officers to train under a federal program referred to as 287(g). In all, 19 officers from four Northwest Arkansas law agencies - Rogers and Springdale police departments and the Washington and Benton county sheriff's offices - will work under the supervision of federal immigration agents to question, detain and process illegal aliens they encounter during their work.
The officers completed a fiveweek training session at ICE's Boston field office in September. They will participate in a regional task force focused on building federal cases against illegal aliens charged with committing serious crimes.
Illegal aliens have become a growing part of the state's population over the past two decades.A study released in April by the Urban Institute, funded by Arkansas' Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, indicated that of the state's estimated foreign born population of 101,000, half are here illegally. The Urban Institute's estimate indicates that illegal aliens make up about 1.5 percent of the state's total population.
According to the state Department of Correction, a look at the 14,300 inmates in state prison in 2006 - the most recent year for which figures are available - revealed 158 illegal aliens, or a little over 1.1 percent of the total inmate population.
In Little Rock, the state's largest city police department, investigators say illegal aliens are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.
Of the city's 59 homicides in 2006, and 38 recorded so far in 2007, only one is believed to have been committed by an illegal alien.
On June 5, 2006, 17-year-old Bernardo Zavala was shot and killed outside an apartment complex on Butler Road in southwest Little Rock. Investigation led detectives to obtain a warrant for a 16-year-old, who police believe has fled the country and gone back to Mexico.
As for robberies, only one this year is believed to have been committed by illegal aliens.
"We do have quite a few cases where illegal aliens are the victims," said Little Rock police detective Sgt. Bruce Maxwell.
Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas said illegal aliens are a"shadow population," whose distrust of law enforcement officials may make them less likely to report crimes.
"These are individuals who can be victimized who sometimes feel they can't report the crimes to police," Thomas said.
He said if the illegal alien residents of his citybelieved local police would be undertaking federal immigration duties, they might be even less likely to cooperate with authorities when crimes occur in their community.
"That perception is there already, and because of that, there is a degree of hesitation to come forward," the chief said.
Thomas said that his officers are already having to "babysit" suspects because of the limited jail capacity, and adding the time and effort necessary to conduct immigration checks would be another burden.
"We have enough to do with our regular duties to take up what we see as a federal issue," Thomas said. "But if there comes a point in time where we feel it is necessary to do some of those things, we'll do them."
Thomas says his officers, if confronted with a situation, would investigate immigration violations.
"If an officer has a reasonable cause to believe that a person they come into contact with is here illegally, we have things we can do," he said. "If they don't have paperwork, or have counterfeit paperwork, those are things we can take into account."
In those situations, police would contact ICE, the chief said.
Arkansas, Pages 19, 21 on 10/28/2007