Elgin police and feds target illegals who commit felonies (Fox Valley Villages Sun)

Elgin police and feds target illegals who commit felonies
By Steven Ross Johnson
Oct 21, 2010 08:32PM

ELGIN — The police department recently launched new efforts targeting illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes.

Police Chief Jeffrey Swoboda said the department last week became the first in the area to have one of its officers to join a federal task force aimed at finding foreign-born gang members with questionable residency status.

Swoboda said the move is designed to further strengthen the relationship between Elgin police and federal authorities by helping them find people who have been arrested in Elgin but were released despite being sought by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

All foreign-born people arrested in Elgin have their identities checked through the Immigration Alien Query database to verify their residency status.

In addition, the federal government contracts to use the city jail to house ICE detainees for up to 72 hours.

“We give ICE a chance to say if they want to talk with the person” arrested, Swoboda said, “and they can put a detainer on them.”

“However, at times, they will get back to us after the person has already bonded out, because sometimes they can be delayed in their response to us.”

He said the role of the officer assigned to what he described as a “public safety gang unit” is to help ICE agents find those who already have been released.

“It did look foolish when we had someone in our custody who bonds out and then ICE says, ‘Hey, we’ve got a detainer for that person,’ ” Swoboda said. “What this does is give us a tool to actually go back out with ICE to locate that person.”

Latest effort

The gang unit, which investigates gang activity throughout all of northern Illinois, is the latest development in a series of cooperative efforts Elgin police have had with federal authorities over the last several years.

In June, the department announced that two detectives were being assigned to a regional Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force, designed to target fraudulent identity document vendors.

Gary Hartwig, head of ICE’s Office of Investigations in Chicago, said such relationships with local law enforcement play a key role in disrupting street gangs whose criminal activities have expanded beyond local street corners over the years.

“Where most gangs had been kind of an on-the-street distribution level related to narcotics, a lot of gangs now — specifically transnational gangs like the Latin Kings — are becoming more and more involved in not just the distribution of narcotics through their street networks,” he said. “They’re also involved in the importation and transportation of narcotics and the subsequent cash back out of the country in relationship to major drug trafficking organizations in Mexico.”

Hartwig credited cooperative efforts such as those involving Elgin police with helping ICE arrest more than 280 gang members in this region so far this year, and with more than 4,000 nationwide. In Elgin, police have held 186 people for ICE since the beginning of January up to the end of September.

“They’re pivotal, absolutely pivotal,” Hartwig said of local law enforcement, “because they’re the people on the streets.”

Swoboda said a major part of the officer’s role in working with ICE will be to follow the cases of foreign-born defendants to identify those who, upon conviction, may violate their legal residency status.

In terms of illegal immigration enforcement, Swoboda said he is comfortable with the department’s approach of focusing on those who commit serious felonies as opposed to more sweeping measures, such as ones where people are detained based solely on questions over whether they are living in the area legally.

“Our ultimate goal is going after criminals, people who are committing felonies, people who are involved in gang activity, and sex offenders,” he said. “We are focusing our efforts on those people who are causing problems within the Elgin community and committing crimes.”