Mayor Jack Wilson

Representatives from the City of Prescott, at the request of Mayor Jack Wilson, attended a meeting with District 1 Representative Andy Tobin and U.S. ICE officials in Phoenix early Wednesday morning. The purpose of the meeting was to attempt to get a clear and definitive response from ICE as to whether Prescott should continue to pursue the ICE certification for their officers, or look for other options in their actions regarding illegal immigration. The Prescott delegation consisted of:

• Mayor Jack D. Wilson
• Mayor Pro-Tem Mary Ann Suttles
• Councilman Jim Lamerson
• City Attorney Gary Kidd
• Deputy City Manager Laurie Hadley
• Police Chief Randy Oaks
• Police Lieutenant Andy Reinhardt

This meeting also included:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

• Jason Kidd, Group Supervisor, Office of Investigations
• Eduardo L. Preciado, Assistant Field Office Director, Detention & removal Operations
• Troy Henley, Acting Northern Arizona Special Agent in Charge

Arizona Representatives

• Andy Tobin, District 1 Representative
• Russell Pearce, District 18 Representative (invited by Representative Tobin)

Despite the fact that Prescott was told that they would not receive the desired ICE certification, Mayor Wilson felt the meeting was productive. "It was very positive, I thought. I think the other councilmembers also thought it was positive. Number one, we got all three of the different ICE officials in the same room, so instead of getting pushed between one to another, we got straight answers. Finally - we've been going round and round on this issue, one month we get one answer and the next month we get a different answer, and finally we got something I think is solid."

One of the reasons for this is that ICE does not consider the issue of day laborers a priority. A blight, perhaps, but not a priority. Mayor Wilson explains, "Their priority, they told us, was detention officers in the jails. Such as they've done to training with the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office to put six trained officers in the jail. So that every criminal that comes through gets screened for legal status. Their experience in Maricopa County is that they get a 10:1 return on detention officers versus field officers. And they were talking about 10,000 people they picked up through the jail processing versus 1000 or less through the field officer trainings. It's a matter of economics, they've got limited budgets just like everybody else."

ICE did offer assistance on another level, however, Wilson said, "I think the thing that we're most interested in is that they offered to come up and do some training here, on immigration issues, and how our officers can spot support documentation, and how we interface with the gangs and things like that. They can teach us some stuff we don't know, and our Lt. Reinhardt who was at the meetings is going to be pursuing that with the ICE officials and I think we're going to try to do it on a regional basis, invite Prescott Valley and Chino Valley to participate, so we can maximize the value."

So, where does Prescott go from here? "We're going to continue the Immigration Task Force, we have not given up on getting something out of that, we're going to go forward on this training issue, that ICE offered to provide training for us, and there was a couple of other issues too...There was one program where we may be able to get an additional officer paid for by 85% and Lt. Reinhardt is investigating that."

Representative Pearce

"Public Representative Pearce is probably the farthest right-most legislator on immigration issues that there is. He takes a very strong stand," Wilson said.

Although Representative Pearce offered a detailed defense for his position that cities have an inherent right to enforce federal immigration laws, Wilson plans to approach Pearce 's ideas cautiously. "Our City Attorney is investigating some of the claims that Representative Pearce made. You have to realize that if you were at that meeting, it sounded like he was a lawyer, well, he's not a lawyer. He was quoting Ninth Circuit, Eighth Circuit, all that stuff, and I have to depend on my City Attorney, not someone who talks like a lawyer."

For further details on this meeting, download the Press Release prepared by Mayor Jack Wilson.

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