Tucson: 26,000 checks, 83 deportations

*This is the first thing that comes to mind:

26 thousand immigration checks over a period of 16 months by the empowered Tucson police, and they nab 83 deportable people. Not only that, when they call the Border Patrol the feds many times don’t bother. Also, some of the cops were calling the BP on their personal cell phones, so there’s no official record of the calls. The time frame, though, is inaccurate because the Tucson PD stopped enforcing immigration laws one year ago. VL

By The Mohave Valley Daily News/Associated Press

TUCSON (AP) — Arizona’s contentious 2010 immigration law has resulted in few deportations from the Tucson area.

An analysis of records by the Arizona Daily Star shows Tucson police ran 26,000 immigration checks for the 16-month period ending Oct. 2. Of all of those checks, 83 people were taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol.

The law requires police, while in enforcing other laws, to question people’s immigration status if they’re suspected to be in the country illegally.

It also requires checks on the immigration status of all arrested people before they can be released from custody.

The overwhelming majority of the 26,000 checks Tucson police documented were based on the requirement that an arrested person’s status be checked before being released. Only 51 checks were done because an officer suspected the person was in the country illegally.

Even when police found someone in this country illegally and called Border Patrol, agents didn’t always show up, often because the suspect wasn’t considered a high priority for deportation.

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