February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Ray O’Hanlon
The undocumented Irish in New York City need not fear the police department. Or any city department for that matter
That was the message coming loud and clear from One Police Plaza this week.
The reassurance followed a recent report in the New York Times that the Justice Department had secured a legal ruling that would allow it to “deputize” state and local police departments as agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
New York’s police officers have applied a practice since the Ed Koch mayoral years of not asking about an individual’s immigration status, even if the officer has doubts.
Koch implemented the don’t-ask policy by means of an executive order.
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The order was intended to encourage the undocumented to report crime, or come forward should they be victims of crime, without fear of their immigration status being questioned by the NYPD.
“The mayor’s [Koch] executive order still applies. It’s still the policy and will remain so,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner Michael Collins told the Echo.
Suggestions of a possible shift in this policy as a result of heightened concern at the Justice Department in the wake of Sept. 11 prompted one prominent Irish immigrant advocate to last week write current mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Attorney Brian O’Dwyer, who heads the Emerald Isle Immigration Center in Queens, said in his letter to Bloomberg that the matter of police policy toward the undocumented was “of the deepest concern” to the Irish and all other immigrant communities in the city.
O’Dwyer’s interpretation of the Justice Department move, as outlined in his letter, was that police departments in various municipalities, including New York, “would fully cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to report and apprehend any undocumented residents in their jurisdiction without distinction to whether the resident is accused of a crime.”
O’Dwyer wrote that “the proposal of the Attorney General [John Ashcroft] would set the clock back at least 20 years” and “have draconian consequences” in a city heavily dependent on immigrants, both documented and undocumented.
O’Dwyer referred in his letter to “near panic” occurring in the city’s immigrant communities as a result of signals from the Justice Department.
Deputy Commissioner Collins, however, was at pains to stress that neither the Justice Department nor the NYPD had undocumented immigrants in their sights just because they were out of status.
Collins said that an undocumented individual would have to be already wanted on a federal felony charge before the NYPD became involved.
The matter of an individual’s immigration status would not, on its own, be of concern to the NYPD.
“The Justice Department is going after different people,” Collins said.
These were people with court orders against them and who were already wanted for federal felonies.