ICE: New immigration enforcement office to open this spring
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By Dustin Lemmon | Monday, December 10, 2007 |
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, still plans to open a four-agent office in Rock Island, but the opening has been delayed until the spring.
The department announced earlier this year it would open an office in Rock Island in the fall, but Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago, said the opening has been rescheduled for spring 2008.
“It’s pretty common on projects like this for the date to shift,” Montenegro said.
Montenegro would not provide any details about why the opening was delayed.
The office will be one of several the agency is opening across the country as part of its fugitive operations team, which targets illegal immigrants who have disobeyed court orders to leave the country, Montenegro said.
Deciding where to place the offices is based on operational needs, available resources, geography and logistics, Montenegro said, declining to provide details on why they chose the Quad-City area.
Sharon Paul, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Central District of Illinois, said the office works closely with ICE agents throughout the district.
“We work with them fairly routinely out on the interstate if someone is carrying aliens,” she said.
She said the U.S. Attorney’s office has prosecuted cases in the Springfield area, where there is already an ICE office, for immigrants with false documentation.
Those cases have often stemmed from arrests of plant managers who were hiring personnel without valid documentation.
One such incident happened earlier this year in Beardstown, Ill., when ICE arrested 13 managers and 49 illegal immigrant employees at Quality Service Integrity Inc. The U.S. Attorney’s office is prosecuting those cases.
Montenegro said earlier this year that ICE changed its approach to dealing with employers who recruit illegal immigrants. The agency now seeks criminal charges against company executives instead of issuing fines.
Rock Island Police Chief John Wright said he’s still waiting to hear more about when the office will open and what involvement its agents will have with local police.
“I think it’s good for the Quad-City area that we have somebody in our back yard we can turn to with questions rather than dealing with somebody over the phone,” he said. “We’ll continue to work with them like we have in the past.”
Doug Williamson, deputy chief with the Springfield (Ill.) police, said his officers have never had any dealings with the ICE office in his city. He said there have been ICE raids at area businesses that employed illegal immigrants, but his officers only see it in the news.
“We don’t know about it,” he said. “We read about it in the paper like everybody else.”
Dustin Lemmon can be contacted at (563) 383-2493 or dlemmon@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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