Immigration is possibly the biggest hot-button issue of our day. When we think of immigration policy, our first instinct is to think of national politics, but citizens of Wake County are discovering that such policy debate can happen on the local level as well. The newly elected sheriff of Wake County, Gerald Baker, ran on a platform of being adverse to Trump on the local level. Now that he has assumed the office of sheriff, we are seeing the righteous efforts of Sheriff Baker in his move to resist a policy that is enormously detrimental to Hispanic and Latino individuals.
In going against federal policy, the sheriff has decided that Wake County will no longer participate in the federal program where local law enforcement would check the immigration status of people under arrest. Section 287(g) of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act is the specific policy which Baker is eying. Section 287(g) allows for agreements between local law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security to be made that require local officers to undergo training conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
There are only six counties in North Carolina that have partnered with ICE as a result of the 287(g) program. Wake County joined the partnership in 2007 under previous Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison. Harrison believed it to be an essential step in keeping Wake County safe, but Baker sees the program as one that might be contributing to an increase in crime and is rightfully taking action against it.
Because of the harsh deportation laws that have come into effect across the nation, Baker believes that members of the Hispanic and Latino communities would be hesitant to call law enforcement for help knowing that they are partnered with ICE.
Baker is right to worry about the effects of this partnership on our community. Ten percent of Wake County’s population is made up of Hispanic residents. The community has already been dealt a devastating blow after NC State police turned in an undocumented immigrant into ICE custody in October of 2018. The individual, Elimas Robledo, had been detected in Greek Village and interviewed by campus police. Upon discovering that he was undocumented, campus police followed the protocol of 287(g) and handed Robledo to immigration officers.
For members of the Hispanic and Latino communities, events like this only work to add a large level of mistrust between residents and law enforcement. A study conducted by the University of Illinois at Chicago discovered that 45 percent of Latinos were less likely to report a crime or voluntarily give up information about crimes because of fear of the police asking them questions about their immigration status; a result that clearly poses a safety threat by having unreported crimes, as well as hindering effective police work.
The study also found out that Latinos feel like they are under more suspicion now with local enforcement partnering with immigration enforcement. This means that the program doesn’t just impede with police work, but also increasingly makes areas like Wake County a hub of paranoia for an ethnic group that is already subjected to disproportionate amounts of policing.
Baker is moving our community in the right direction by ridding our county of an awful program. Too much damage has already been done to the Latino and Hispanic communities by the decade-long reign of the policy, but the communities and the county as a whole can still be healed.
