O’Neill wants to crack
down on illegal immigrants

By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer

It’s been six weeks since three Delaware State University students were shot and killed in a school yard in Newark, N.J. One of the suspects in the crime is an illegal immigrant previously arrested, and then released on bail, in the rape of a little girl.
City Councilman Brian O’Neill (R-10th dist.) thinks the three deaths could have been prevented had police in New Jersey checked the suspect’s immigration status, something the state attorney general late last month began requiring officers to do.
O’Neill now wants Philadelphia to follow suit. The politician sent a letter to Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson notifying him that he plans to introduce a resolution in City Council Sept. 20 that would ask arresting officers to check the immigration status of immigrants who commit felonies.
In an interview last week, O’Neill cited Philadelphia’s skyrocketing murder rate as a key reason for the legislation.
Roughly one third of criminal aliens go on to commit more crimes, according to statistics reported by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2000.
"We don’t want to become the immigration police, but when you commit a felony, you raise the bar," O’Neill said.
The legislation comes at a time when municipalities across the country are grappling with solutions to crime and the prevalence of undocumented immigrants.
In July, a federal judge overturned an ordinance passed last year in Hazleton, Pa., that would fine landlords who rent to illegal aliens and deny permits to businesses that employ them. Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta instituted the ordinance after attributing the city’s increase in crime in part to an influx of illegal immigrants.
New Jersey and municipalities in Virginia have opted to start questioning felons’ immigration status in recent months. The procedure includes forwarding information to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"It is basic, and it is relatively simple," O’Neill said of the process.
Capt. Benjamin Naish, former spokesman for the police department, is not so sure. He said implementing checks on immigration now would "make for an unnecessary burden."
"It’s something that could be explored," he said. "(But) to order something (now) like what’s happening in New Jersey would be placing an undue burden on the department."
Groups in New Jersey fear the process might lead to profiling and instill mistrust of police in immigrant communities.
Corrine Thatcher, who previously helped head the Brazilian Organization for Social Services (BOSS) in Castor Gardens, said if adopted in Philadelphia, the procedure might make immigrants "even less likely than they already are to cooperate with police on crime investigations."
Naish said the police department does check immigration status when warranted. He said police "arrest a lot of people for felonies" but didn’t have numbers on how many were illegal immigrants. It would serve the city well, he added, to see how the new procedure affects workloads for police departments in states like New Jersey.
But O’Neill doesn’t want to wait because it could mean the difference between life and death, he said.
"Being the most violent city in the country, I assumed we’d at least act quickly to close the gap in our crime fighting," he said. "We’re terribly inept at dealing with the violence." ••
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com