I didn’t get the Internet back until 3PM CST yesterday, which was annoying, but I had some handyman stuff to keep me busy. The annoying part is that they charge me whether I have access or not.

Badtux points out that entering the US without all of the proper paperwork is not a crime. It is a violation of rules, and will remain that way unless some ignorant Congresscritters make it a crime which will cost the Federal government billions of dollars every year. If undocumented aliens are picked up, they aren’t charged with a crime, they have, at most, a hearing before an administrative judge, and are sent back to their country of origin. Badtux provides chapter and verse of the US Code.

The fact that it isn’t a crime is why local law enforcement is unhappy with helping the Feds. First off, local law enforcement is not authorized to enforce Federal regulations. State laws don’t allow you to hold people in jail for unlimited periods. You have to charge people or release them within a given time period. If they are charged with a violation of state law they are entitled to an attorney and a bail hearing. If they can make bail. you have to release them. The Feds want you to hold people until they get around to dropping by, but they aren’t paying the bills, and they aren’t facing a lawsuit if the individual actually has all of the paper work.

Working with the Feds is a Win/Lose – the Feds get the money and credit if it’s a good bust, but the locals get the blame and the bills if it’s a disaster. I had a budget when I was in law enforcement, and I had enough problems protecting it from interdepartmental raids, I sure as hell wasn’t interested in wasting anything on the Feds. If they wanted to pony up more cash, then we could have talked, but if they did, local politicians would have cut their share so they could cut taxes. That was the way things worked during Reagan – no reduction in requirements, just shifting funding responsibilities to another layer of government.