Montgomery County immigrant advocates are trying to get county Police Chief J. Thomas Manger to leave immigration warrant enforcement to federal officials.
Some activists are at odds with Manger after the chief said last week that he would not ignore federal immigration warrants.
Mike Mage, co-chair of the Montgomery County chapter of the ACLU, said the group on Wednesday filed a request for information about immigrant detainment by county police under the Maryland Public Information Act.
CASA of Maryland Executive Director Gustavo Torres, who met with County Executive Ike Leggett about the warrant issue last week, said 65 immigrants were detained by county police in 2006, and 25 have been detained thus far in 2007.
Torres said police should leave immigration issues to federal officials and should concentrate on other criminal activity.
“We’d like them to focus on things like murders, rapes, terrorism,” Torres said. “Those kinds of unacceptable crimes that harm our community.”
Police department media liaison Blanca Kling said Manger has said he would prefer not to deal with immigration warrants because he doesn’t want to risk losing the trust of the immigrant community, but he is bound to do so by law.
“This is really an issue at a national level, not just for the Montgomery County police,” Kling said.
“If an officer stops a person whose name is on the [National Crime Information Center] list, the officer has to call immigration,” Kling said. “And if the person is wanted, they are transported to a detention center. We have to take the court seriously.”
Kling said the department is not acting as immigration authorities, but it is charged with running the names of people stopped for violations of the law through the National Crime Information Center database.
“When somebody goes through a red light, an officer is going to stop you and check your identity,” Kling said. “If you’re wanted, in good conscience, Chief Manger can’t tell his officers not to enforce some warrants.”
Some police departments, including those in Houston and New Haven, Conn., are not enforcing civil immigration warrants.
