Just because the ICE doesn't do their job, doesn't mean that police departments shouldn't do theirs. Gang members and criminals return to cities where they know they won't be hassled by law enforcement. When ICE detects the "throw the towel in" attitude of police chiefs, they find it easy to refuse to take illegals off the hands of local police into their own custody.

In 2000, the LAPD gang task force called CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) now defunct, was successful, city-wide, in reducing gang related crime. Although some CRASH officers were justifiably found guilty of abusing suspects and falsifying reports, part of their success was attributed to ignoring Special Order 40 and working with the INS (now ICE) in getting gang members deported. Regardless of the unorthodoxy by these rogue cops, they proved that gang members could be successfully deported even when not charged with a crime when pressure was put on the INS to get involved. Moreover, the CRASH cops left deported gang members with little incentive to return to Los Angeles.

Read Op-Ed by Hal Netkin