Arkansas State Police to receive federal immigration training

Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas State Police troopers will be trained on how to examine and detect forged identity documents carried by suspected illegal immigrants, but will not have the power to make immigration arrests, officials said Tuesday.

Troopers in the field, radio operators and those at driver’s licensing stations will learn about identification typically carried by immigrants, spokesman Bill Sadler said. If troopers found a suspected forgery, they would call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to continue the investigation and potentially make an arrest.

“The idea is that the troopers and the other personnel that would be trained would have a better grasp of knowing what to look for in regard to authenticating a document, such as a driver license, a worker’s card or an ID card, passport, visa, whatever it may be, or a birth certificate,” Sadler said.

The agreement, signed Monday by state police director Col. Winford Phillips, also will give troopers access to a federal immigration database that can verify documents and check a suspect’s immigration status.

Currently, four police agencies in northwest Arkansas have signed agreements with ICE on immigration law, and they have the power to make arrests and run investigations. But Sadler said, “There was no discussion about that at all.”

In 2005, the state Legislature passed a law authorizing, but not mandating, the state police to put officers through an eight-week immigration and customs enforcement course to allow them to make immigration arrests. But the state police under then-Col. Steve Dozier declined to pursue the option. In September, under Phillips, officials announced they sent a letter to ICE, asking to be part of the program.

Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, said Tuesday the governor’s office had seen a draft proposal of the agreement and signed off on it.

“This is along the line of what the governor was speaking to last year, doing what we can to improve existing communications with the federal agencies,” DeCample said.

However, Beebe has recounted several times a story about a police officer telling him how difficult it is to contact ICE agents, making local and state officers less likely to go through an immigration-screening process that can take hours.