One County Saw a 27% Drop in Assaults After It Helped Enforce Immigration Law. Here’s the Rest of the Story.
http://dailysignal.com/2017/02/27/one-county-saw-a-27-drop-in-assaults-after-it-helped-enforce-immigration-law-heres-the-rest-of-the-story/ February 27, 2017
In July 2007, the elected board of a growing county in Northern Virginia adopted a controversial resolution requiring the police department to partner with the federal government to help deport illegal immigrants.
Corey Stewart, the Republican elected the year before as chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, ran on a platform of stricter immigration enforcement during a time of economic anxiety.
“The main purpose of the resolution was to remove criminal illegal aliens so they couldn’t commit crimes, and to reduce illegal immigration to Prince William County,” Stewart recalled in an interview with The Daily Signal.
Before 2007, Prince William, a county of about 450,000 today, experienced dramatic growth in the number of foreign-born residents.
Most of these recent arrivals were Latino, a segment of the total population that almost doubled from 11.5 percent in 2000 to 21.9 percent in 2006....
...Prince William’s policy, as originally implemented in March 2008, required police to inquire about the immigration status of anyone officers encountered who they suspected to be in the country illegally, including people stopped for traffic tickets, for instance....
...Under the change, police officers could inquire about immigration status only after arresting someone and taking him or her to the county jail—not during interactions on the street before making an arrest....
...But today he credits the change with helping reduce serious crimes in Prince William County, such as aggravated assault—which declined 27 percent after announcement of the original policy in July 2007—while also respecting residents.
According to a University of Virginia report from 2010, no one made a substantiated claim of racial profiling related to the immigration enforcement program. Stewart says that is still the case....
