Struggling to fill the ranks of their police officers, some blue-state politicians are turning to an unusual option: illegal immigrants.
A California law that took effect earlier this year allows noncitizens — including some unauthorized migrants — to sign up if they are protected from deportation, including by the Obama-era DACA program. Colorado and Illinois have followed suit with laws allowing some noncitizens to join the force.
It’s all deeply uncharted territory.
Lawmakers aren’t sure who could qualify, and analysts said it’s unclear who would be authorized to carry firearms.
“It’s a massive problem,” said Matt O’Brien, a former immigration judge who is now with the Immigration Reform Law Institute. “You’ve got this muddle of issues where there is no settled law, and it’s now crashing into the fact that these idiots in the defund-the-police movement have caused a crisis in law enforcement.”
Those pushing the idea do cite the need for more police and the desire to attract a wider demographic to the job.
They also see a breakdown of barriers for immigrants, particularly those under DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which extends a temporary deportation amnesty to illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.
Supporters say the immigrants must meet all the regular qualifications and complete training before patrolling the streets.
Still, the thought of someone in the country illegally, even with tentative protections, having the power to enforce laws on others rubs many people the wrong way.
“It raises questions of fairness, of conflicts of interest and security,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Immigration Studies. “If we are having folks that our government knows are in violation of the law or have broken the law and we are deputizing them to enforce other laws, that doesn’t bring confidence to our legal system.”
Less controversy has been raised over allowing noncitizens who hold green cards, signifying legal permanent residency, to join the police force. That has been allowed in some states for a while.
States also deem those with asylum or refugee status less problematic.
Beyond that, things become complicated.
California law allows those with valid work permits issued by the Homeland Security Department to sign up. That covers DACA recipients and those who arrived illegally but have been granted tentative status because of rough conditions in their home countries. It could even encompass some illegal immigrants caught and released into the U.S. under Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ “parole” power.
That’s particularly troubling because those migrants are not always screened against criminal databases in their home countries before they are released into the U.S. Many have paid significant money to reach the U.S. and often are indebted to smuggling cartels.
“The whole thing is lunacy,” said Rosemary Jenks, vice president at NumbersUSA, which lobbies for stricter immigration controls.
“We know nothing — literally nothing — about these people other than what they told us. We don’t even know if they’re giving us their real names, and if they have a criminal record back home, they’re definitely not giving us their real names. So how are you going to vet people?” she asked.
Guns add another dimension for politicians and legal analysts.
According to Colorado Public Radio, the police force in Greeley, north of Denver, tried to hire a DACA recipient in 2021. He made it into the testing stage, and the department was conducting background checks when it ran into a roadblock. Police attorneys said the man wasn’t authorized to carry a firearm.
The law Colorado adopted this year does give DACA recipients and people who have “applied to obtain asylum status” a chance to sign up. Police agencies can arm immigrant officers but must comply with federal laws and regulations.
Asked what that means, a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office pointed to the legislation and to a webpage suggesting that local agencies can issue guns to illegal immigrants, but it calls the issue “complicated.”
California’s attorney general didn’t respond to an inquiry on how it sees state laws for firearms and unauthorized migrants.
In Illinois, the law says DACA recipients can sign up — but the very next sentence says they must be eligible under federal law to possess a firearm.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which has jurisdiction over guns and the prohibited persons law, didn’t answer an inquiry about how it reads the law to apply in these situations.
ATF told the Chicago Tribune this year that the gun-ban exception for official use applies only to time on the job.
Noncitizens could carry while on duty but would have to relinquish their weapons after every shift. Most law enforcement agencies encourage, and some require, that their officers carry their weapons even off-duty.
State Rep. Barbara Hernandez told The Associated Press that she doesn’t think DACA recipients can possess weapons, so she considers that part of her law “symbolic” — for now.
The police chief in Blue Island, south of Chicago, was working on hiring DACA recipients this spring in anticipation of the changes.
Chief Geoffrey Farr told the Tribune he was still eager to have the officers even if they could possess weapons only while on the job and couldn’t take them home. He said DACA recipients could help his department connect with the community’s heavily Hispanic population and that allowing them to join up was the right thing to do.
“There’s a segment of the population who cannot vote and cannot carry a gun. Those are usually referred to as convicted felons,” Chief Farr said. “So, in essence, the DACA recipients have the same restrictions upon them that convicted felons do. So that ain’t right.”
Chief Farr, who didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Times, told the Tribune he had several inquiries from DACA recipients.
That suggests at least some interest from the noncitizen target population, though how much remains unclear.
Utah enacted a law two years ago to allow some noncitizens to sign up. That change was backed by the Salt Lake City Police Department. The department said it has not hired anyone under the new law.
Ms. Jacobs said there are reasons other than hiring that may be behind the surge of new laws.
“It’s undermining the meaning of citizenship and the essence of our immigration laws as a whole,” she said.
Particularly worrying is the scenario of a smuggling cartel sending operatives across the border, or recruiting from among the mass of migrants who still owe cartels for the journey, and having them sign up for a police force.
The Border Patrol faced a similar problem when it went on a hiring spree in the Bush years. It got to the point where Congress rushed an anti-corruption law into effect to combat cartel-controlled agents.
Tom Burrell, writing at Police1.com, said such a scenario is “possible” with police under the new state laws but a good background check could weed them out. Besides, he said, U.S. citizen officers can be just as bad.
He said police forces need the help.
“In the end, American law enforcement is facing a crisis,” he wrote. “While allowing non-citizens is unlikely to completely fill the gap, it is a step in the right direction.”
Backers also point to the U.S. military, which allows legal immigrants to join up and has tried to recruit DACA recipients for some duties. Current policy bars them from signing up.
The push to expand police forces to noncitizens is often driven by former officers now serving in state legislatures.
The effort is also strikingly bipartisan. Illinois’ measure cleared the state House on a 100-7 vote.
Among those Republican supporters was state Rep. Chris Miller, who backed the bill. His wife, U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, took to Twitter to call the bill “madness.”
Lawmakers in Nevada and Wisconsin have also debated bills to expand their police forces to include DACA recipients.
A backlash is developing in Georgia, where a lawmaker has vowed to propose an amendment to the state’s constitution to require that cops be citizens, which would elevate a law already on the books.
D.A. King, founder of the Dustin Inman Society, a Georgia group that backs stricter immigration controls, said the amendment has a chance of being put to voters next year.
“When this idea becomes widely known by voters of both parties, legislators are going to have to publicly pick a side on the possibility of foreign cops — perhaps even illegal aliens with DACA status — someday arresting Americans in Georgia,” he told The Washington Times.
“It will be difficult for Republican legislators who all ran as ‘conservatives’ to vote against this one if the opportunity arises. Ditto for many rural Democrats — enough, I judge, for passage,” he said.
