Sheriffs: Don't make us immigration cops

Rancher says securing border everyone's job
DAVID L. TEIBEL
Photo by FRANCISCO MEDINA/Tucson Citizen
Published: 05.11.2006

Ron White sees two kinds of illegal immigrants on his ranch south of town.
There are the dozens each day who simply pass through. They are a nuisance.
But others, White says, are a threat - like the group that tried to order him off his horse, or the smugglers who cut his fences every full moon.

The distinction between trespassers and violent criminals is critical to Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who says he doesn't have the manpower to enforce federal immigration law while also solving murders and investigating robberies along the border.

The robberies are committed largely by bandits preying on people walking north to find work.

Dupnik says he will turn down any extra money to fight border crime if it requires him to become an immigration cop. His concerns are echoed by southern Arizona's other sheriffs, and by a coalition of 25 border sheriffs from Texas to California, as Congress considers measures that could shift more immigration-enforcement responsibilities to local lawmen.