State, local policies emerge on illegal immigrants

The two Mexican farmworkers were nervous. Seated in a pickup truck whose driver had been stopped for speeding on a Vermont highway, they didn't know what to expect from the state trooper.

They had heard of other farmworkers being detained or deported in the largely white state, whose $560 million dairy industry relies on Mexican farmhands like them. But one of the men also had been in a similar stop in New York and didn't get bothered.

They had no idea their detention by police and the Border Patrol would prompt a protest by activists at the state police barracks, or the outpouring of support they've gotten with people offering them housing and help. The stop would lead Vermont's governor to change the state police policy on dealing with suspected illegal immigrants, making it one of the most restrictive on police in the U.S., according to one policy expert who supports tougher immigration laws.

The combination of more illegal immigrants moving beyond the border states to follow jobs and a lack of federal immigration reform has some states and communities coming up with their own enforcement policies – written or not.

They range from crackdowns to a hands-off approach where police are prohibited from asking about immigration status.

"Almost every community is like a border state because illegal immigrants are so much more mobile than they used to be. They go where the jobs are. They spread out across the country," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for tougher immigration laws.

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The immigrants settle not in traditional urban areas but in places like Iowa, Missouri, eastern Washington State, and Vermont, she said.

"It has to do with where the jobs are, where the recruiters are for these jobs," she said.

Under policy revisions made since the arrest, the Vermont State Police will not ask an individual about his or her immigration status when investigating a civil violation – mainly a traffic stop – but can ask about it in investigations of criminal offenses or suspicious activity in certain cases.

The changes were made to ensure the fair and equal treatment of all individuals in Vermont, said Vermont Public Safety Director Keith Flynn.

But troopers cannot launch a criminal investigation only because they suspect a person is in the country illegally.

If they respond to an emergency call about a domestic assault, for example, and see that a woman has been beaten up, they would do all they could to identify the suspected offender except ask about immigration status because it would not be relevant, said Stephanie Dasaro, state police spokeswoman. They could ask about it after an arrest has been made.

But if troopers were looking into a case of human trafficking in which immigration is relevant, they could ask about immigration status, she said.

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