TRACKING UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS 

            What I see as the most difficult task for street officers, with regards to illegal immigration is that, unlike American citizens, many legal, and all illegal immigrants are virtually impossible to track via the NCIC system or state level counterparts. The significance for police officers is when undocumented aliens are arrested; there is no system to check their criminal history. If an alien is able to post bond and get out of jail, all he has to do to avoid future arrest or prosecution is to create a new name. This may sound simple on the surface but the nuances and implications for street level officers are enormous.

            If an officer contacts an American citizen under suspicious/criminal circumstances, he or she as a matter of routine checks that individual over the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) system. Virtually all adults born and raised here in America can be found somewhere on that system. When someone is not found on NCIC, it is a red flag to the officer, prompting further investigation to uncover the truth as to why that person is not in the system.

Undocumented aliens are not on any system and most of them seem to know it. It is not unlikely to check one and have him/her come back “not on file”. Years ago that might have elicited the same response from an officer as finding an American citizen “not on file” but since there are so many illegal aliens now, it has become the norm and most officers would not even bat an eye.

            What this means to the general public is that an illegal immigrant can commit any number of crimes and be wanted in any number of jurisdictions for those crimes and they are able to continually avoid prosecution just by moving to a new jurisdiction and changing his or her name. Since he has no government ID there is nothing to serve as a reference point for an NCIC check. Civilians seem to think that all we have to do is run a person’s fingerprints and we instantly know who that person is and if they have a criminal record. That is not the case. Most jurisdictions, especially large ones, are very busy and rarely run fingerprints on misdemeanor arrests. When they do run fingerprints against the national database it can take up to several days to receive a match that must then be confirmed by a fingerprint expert. By then, most criminals who can post bail have already done so. In effect, an illegal alien can be wanted for murder in 7 states and I can arrest him for DUI with no driver’s license and never know that he is a wanted person.

            The same problem arises when it comes to deporting illegal aliens after they have been convicted of a felony. At least on paper, if we can get a felony conviction on an illegal immigrant, he/she will be deported. Try to get an ICE agent to show up in court for a verdict and you will understand why it is nearly impossible to follow through with deportation. The system depends on the honesty of the perpetrator for it to work successfully. If he doesn’t want to be deported, all he has to do is move.

            There’s a lot more to this topic than I have explained here but if you are interested, I would be happy to expound.