Big cities balk over illegal migrants

The USA Today reports:

Despite a federal effort to enlist help from local police to catch illegal immigrants, some of the USA's biggest cities are declining to enforce immigration laws.

Police chiefs, mayors and city councils are ordering local cops not to get involved as federal agents crack down on people in the country illegally.

“Vulnerable people have always needed to see the police as being there to protect and serve, and that can't happen when the first words out of a cop's mouth are, ‘I need to see your papers,' ” Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been visiting police conventions in an effort to have departments join a voluntary program. ICE has trained officers in seven jurisdictions to identify, process and detain illegal immigrants, said Robert Hines, who heads the program started in 1996. Participants include state police in Alabama and Florida, the Arizona corrections department and sheriff's departments in San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Riverside counties in California and Mecklenburg County, N.C.

Several jurisdictions have refused to help. Chicago police and city workers are prohibited from asking immigrants about their legal status. Rybak asked ICE agents last month to stop identifying themselves as “police.” New York City's public hospitals promised last month that they would keep secret an immigrant's legal status.

In some of these big cities, illegals are welcomed so the federal government will send more money to the local school district.