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Womack says program would help
Published August 25, 2009
Albertville police Chief Benny Womack believes the 287(g) is an important program to help his department handle the illegal immigration situation, but some in the Hispanic community are concerned it may be used as a tool for harassment.
The training would allow officers to investigate someone’s immigration status.
For example, if a patrol officer stops someone and writes them a ticket for speeding, but notices something that leads him to believe the person may be here illegally, the officer can start an investigation into the status of that individual.
“The officer would be trained well enough to know the indicators and what questions to ask,” Womack said. “It is always that way with any kind of training and dealing with suspects, for any charge.”
However, the training would not be limited to only patrol officers. The officers would come from different divisions in the department.
If the current city administration manages to get the program, Womack plans to send between six to eight officers to receive the training, but not all of them at one time.
“I can’t send eight officers at the same time,” Womack said. “I believe it takes either five or six weeks to complete the training. There’s no way. I would be doing good if I could send two at a time.”
By sending two officers at one time, it would take about two years to get all of the officers trained.
Also, after the officers are trained, all of their actions have to be directly supervised by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, and Womack said the supervising agent would have to be closer than the ICE detention center, currently located in Gadsden.
The ICE agent would review each report processed by the trained officers.
“The 287(g), we need it,” Womack said. “We really do, but there are individuals in this community that would like for people — including the immigrant population here — they would like for those individuals, in my opinion, to think that we are racists, which we are not.”
Womack said the training was simply a tool his department could use when addressing issues that arise with illegal immigrants.
“We do have a particular problem regarding some of our Latino community, but not all of them by any means,” he said. “It is always the smaller groups — criminals or gang members — those types of individuals that are involved in organized crime that cause the problem for the larger group.
“We all know I think, and it has been publicly stated that, and this is my guess, probably 70 or 80 percent of the Latino community is what you would call an illegal immigrant under federal law.”
According to Aylene Sepulveda, of the North Alabama Hispanic Committee, there are many in the Hispanic community that are concerned the program will be used to do mass roundups of illegal immigrants, and as a result many Hispanics are already leaving the area.
“I don’t think that would be the intentions,” Sepulveda said, “but we have seen it in other areas such as Maricopa, where they have gotten citizens’ cooperation to round people up, well, to not round people up but to report people.”
Womack said mass roundups of illegal immigrants would not happen.
“Stop and think about it. If I’m only going to get five, six, seven or eight officers trained, how are they going to arrest six, eight, 10 thousand people?” Womack said. “How is that going to happen? It’s not going to happen.”
Womack went on to say the 287(g) program would be used to focus on more serious criminals.
“I know this community. I know this community very well,” Womack said. “I’ve worked here since 1978.
“The people that live here expect to have good honest proactive law enforcement, but even before I was chief, under other chiefs and other administrations, they always got that.
“This department has that reputation and tradition of being proactive and forward thinking, but good honest law enforcement.”
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