WASHINGTON—Local law enforcement agencies across the country are clamoring for the chance to join the federal government in fighting illegal immigration. Applications to partner with the immigration service have spiked and new technology has sparked more interest.

Thirty-four new police and sheriff departments signed on to participate in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 287 (g) program, a federal-local partnership that 67 other law enforcement departments have forged since 2003.

The program trains law enforcement officers to carry out functions of federal immigration officials in the course of their policing duties. This includes running information on those arrested for crimes through ICE federal databases, detaining illegal immigrants and beginning processes for deportation.

The 34 agencies that signed on to the program between October, 2007 and September, 2008, as well as the 40 pending requests, shows promise for cracking down on illegal immigration nationwide, ICE officials said Wednesday.

“This was a record year for the number of agencies signing,” said Richard Rocha, spokesman for ICE, as the immigration agency is known. “They are seeing that it adds additional support to their efforts.”

Last year, 26 local agencies signed on to the program. But in the years dating back to 2003, fewer than five agencies enrolled annually.

The program started 12 years ago under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.. To date, Rocha said it has trained 950 local officers and identified more than 75,000 immigrants who may be in violation of immigration laws.

“We’ve seen continued interest because other law enforcement agencies are seeing the benefits of the program in their communities,” Rocha said. “Any time that law enforcement can remove criminal aliens from their communities, the public benefits.”

The Benefits

Prince William County in Virginia reported that since officially signing on to the 287(g) program in February, its police and sheriff departments detained more than 1,000 illegal immigrants who had been arrested and charged with crimes.

The Prince William departments handed over 907 criminally-charged illegal immigrants to ICE, and currently have 110 awaiting deportation after serving their sentences.

"There’s no question that this program has done two things: it’s made the community safer from crime and it’s improved the living conditions in the community,” said Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, an avid supporter of the program.

“In 2007 when we started this process, we began to notice that illegal immigrants in schools and in the community began to leave the county,” he said.

“People tell us all the time that they feel safer in their neighborhoods and they’re having fewer problems with everything from overcrowded homes, to gang problems and graffiti,” Stewart said.

Similarly, neighboring sheriff and police departments in Frederick County, Maryland—the first and only county in that state to join the program—reported that they have identified and detained about 215 illegal immigrants—most of whom were stopped for traffic violations.

“The immediate impact is not known, but once we entered the program and started helping ICE check the immigration status of those in our detention center, we found 8.5 percent of the jail population is in the country illegally,” said Capt. Tim Clarke, of the Frederick County Sheriff Department.

Other small-town law enforcement agencies have their eye on Frederick.

“We’ve obtained a lot of inquiries in the county (for) information about the program to see if they want to apply,” Clarke said. “I know there’s a considerable list for the 287 (g) program, it would probably take a considerable amount of time before they were able to join.”

Another View

Some immigration experts say that the long waiting lists may give agencies more time to rethink what they’re doing.

“When they seek to become experts in immigration law, it leads to profiling,” said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Law Foundation. “They make assumptions and legal residents and citizens pay the price. It chips away at the core of due process and the whole theory of constitutional constraints on law enforcement officers.”

“What we've seen in those areas,” Johnson said, “ are increases in the cost of local enforcement and a decrease in a response time for the jobs they are supposed to do-- all in an efforts to chase busboys and farm workers whose only run in with the law are immigration violations.”

The Future of 287 (g)

The Fairfax County Sheriff Department may already be feeling the brunt of the 287 (g) rush.

The county, located in Northern Virginia, was the latest in the Washington area to try to join the program, but its application was rejected a month ago, officials said.

“The program is not the most effective tool for every agency, but we will continue to work with that agency to find a good tool,” Rocha said of Fairfax’s rejection.

However, Fairfax is holding out for the chance to surpass its counterparts by applying for a new program launched by ICE last month.

An extension of the 287 (g), called Secure Communities, speeds up the process of identifying illegal immigrants through the routine fingerprinting of arrested individuals. The fingerprints of those arrested can be immediately transmitted to immigration officials to determine citizenship status.

The Harris County Sheriff Department in Texas is the first of seven agencies to utilize the new program with ICE—and to be enrolled in both programs. Between Oct. 27 and Nov. 12, the new biometric technology has turned up 83 hits, according to Lt. John Legg, public information officer for the department.

“We’ve become much more effective in the last couple years and especially in the last year …with adding this tool,” he said.

ICE hopes to expand the technology to 50 law enforcement agencies by next spring.

“We want a partnership with ICE and we need to deport our criminal illegal aliens,” said Pat Harrity, county supervisor of Fairfax. “Our criminal illegal aliens should be deported after they serve their time, and that’s what 287 (g) would have allowed us to do. And that’s what this new program will allow us to do.”