Arizona police to play pioneering immigration role

PHOENIX (Reuters) - U.S. federal agents have begun training Arizona police to enforce immigration laws in a pioneering move to combat violent smuggling networks from Mexico, police said on Monday.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency said federal agents began working with police in Phoenix last month to curb crime tied to smuggling over the border and are set to train select state and county officers over coming months.

"We will be the first (state) in the nation with county, city and state officers with a cross designation to enforce immigration laws," Alonzo Pena, the ICE special agent in charge of Arizona, told Reuters in an interview.

Last year, some 1.1 million undocumented immigrants were arrested crossing over the Mexico border, almost half of them in southern Arizona.

Armed clashes between rival drug and immigrant trafficking groups are increasingly common in the desert state, with several people having been shot to death in smuggling-related incidents since the start of the year.

Pena said that, once trained, the new teams would focus on breaking up human and drug trafficking rings and other border-related criminal activity in the Phoenix area.

"The intent is very clear," he said. "This is a tool to go after criminal aliens and aliens that are here illegally and committing crimes ... not to randomly question individuals about their immigration status."

The operation began last month when 10 ICE agents were assigned to work alongside Phoenix police investigating violent crime related to human and drug trafficking, Pena said.

In late February it was extended to include the first of 160 Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputies, who are being trained specifically to enforce immigration laws.

In coming weeks, up to 100 Arizona Department of Public Safety officers are also expected to start training.

HISPANICS DIVIDED OVER THE MOVE

Hispanic activists are divided over the move to give local police the powers to enforce immigration in the Phoenix valley, where around a third of the population of 3.5 million are of Mexican descent.

"It is a big concern as the trust between the police department and the Hispanic community will be eroded if (police officers) begin enforcing immigration laws," Daniel Ortega, a Phoenix attorney and Latino activist, told Reuters.

"Witnesses to crimes may now be afraid to call police for fear of being deported."

Elias Bermudez, director of the advocacy group Immigrants Without Borders, gave a cautious welcome to the move, which he said was needed to combat rampant crime that harmed many immigrants.

"We want ICE to cooperate with the police to stop crime committed against illegal immigrants," he said.

"The coyotes (professional immigrant smugglers) are raping our own ladies who are coming across the fence, so we want to stop those violent criminals."