Newark Triple Murder Fuels Debate on Treatment of Illegal Aliens

NEWARK, Aug. 17 — The radio advertisement, released after the killings of three young people here, starts with a few notes of music and an anonymous voice-over before Rudolph W. Giuliani speaks.

“It frustrates me that if someone comes here illegally,” Mr. Giuliani says as the music swells, “if they commit a crime, we don’t throw them out of the country.”

Among the motivations for the 60-second spot, part of Mr. Giuliani’s presidential campaign, was the revelation that a suspect in the Newark shootings, Jose Lachira Carranza, is an illegal immigrant from Peru who could have been detained by federal immigration authorities after he was arrested three times on criminal charges.

A national chorus reacted with horror to the Aug. 4 killings at a playground here, and Mr. Giuliani’s advertisement speaks for a prominent subset: those who have cited the shooting deaths to bolster their argument that the criminal justice system treats illegal immigrants too leniently.

Besides Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor and Republican presidential candidate, the critics have included Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker. (“Far more Americans are being killed by violent, evil people here in America than in our official military ‘combat zones’ overseas,” he wrote in the National Review.)

And Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, is bringing his immigration-themed presidential campaign here on Monday for a news conference “to denounce the sanctuary city policy of Newark.”

Some of the loudest arguments have been over whether local law enforcement officials should check the immigration status of people they arrest and then report those who are here illegally to the federal authorities.

The question has become a flashpoint for municipal officials who are grappling with immigration. Some of them say routine immigration checks are among the few tools they have to deal with what is largely a federal issue. Others herald their cities as immigrant sanctuaries.

The mayor of Newark, Cory A. Booker, has tried to keep the public discussion focused on his main goal: reducing the crime rate. Mr. Booker said he was frustrated that Mr. Carranza had been freed, but, responding to the debate surrounding the suspect’s illegal status, has come out firmly against involving city police in immigration matters.

He said such a role would hurt relationships with what he called “the most marginalized and vulnerable people within our community.”

“My Police Department does not play an I.N.S. function,” Mr. Booker said. “We are not to be running around doing interrogations about whether someone is documented or not.”

Two reviews — one by New Jersey’s attorney general, the other by a retired judge appointed by the state’s chief justice — are looking at Mr. Carranza’s journey through the criminal justice system and examining whether mistakes were made; the immigration question is only one factor.

Mr. Carranza was first arrested in October 2006, in West Orange, N.J., on aggravated assault charges after a bar fight, and again twice earlier this year on charges that he raped a child in his care. After the October arrest, he was freed on $20,000 bail.

After the second arrest, in Orange, N.J., bail was set at $150,000, and Mr. Carranza was freed after posting it through a bondsman. Arrested again in May, in Newark, on additional sexual assault charges in the child rape case, bail was set at $300,000 but then lowered to $150,000, which Mr. Carranza had already posted.

In neither case did the arresting officers report Mr. Carranza’s immigration status to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement center that acts as a liaison with local officers. Neither did the prosecutors who were handling the two cases; their policy is to contact the immigration service only when cases are completed.

James M. Porfido, a former Morris County prosecutor who ran the county’s sex crimes unit and who is now a criminal defense lawyer, said that while the most violent offenders were usually held without bail, several of his clients who had been charged with first-degree sexual assault — as Mr. Carranza was — were held without bail.

Of Mr. Carranza, he said, “If I’m the prosecutor, he’s not going anywhere.”

It was only after his arrest on murder charges on Aug. 9 that Mr. Carranza’s immigration status was reported. After an employee in the Essex County Sheriff’s Office learned that Mr. Carranza’s Social Security number was fake, the immigration service issued a “detainer,” which gave federal agents the right to hold Mr. Carranza if and when local officials set him free.

The Carranza case involves two distinct issues: the release of Mr. Carranza on bail and the fact that local authorities did not notify federal officials about his immigration status. Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey has tried to untangle the issues.

“The issue of proactive immigration law enforcement is different than how you might deal with an individual that is, for some other reason, in the criminal justice system,” Mr. Corzine said at a news conference last week with Mr. Booker.

The debate, the governor added, is whether the Newark police should “be having people out enforcing the immigration laws and jamming the jails even more than what we have now, versus the issue of when someone has committed a felony and you have them in custody checking out their documentation.”

Asked whether the state would start checking immigration status, Mr. Corzine deferred to his attorney general, Anne Milgram. She has said that she will speak publicly about the issue soon.

In the New York City area, some leaders — including the mayor of Morristown, N.J. — have embraced a federal program known as 287 (g). The program, named for a section of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act, allows local officers to be deputized as immigration agents.

In other cities, mayors have moved in the opposite direction, formally declaring that local officials, including the police, will not ask about immigration status.

In Newark, the Municipal Council has adopted a nonbinding resolution that commits the city to being a “sanctuary” for immigrants.

But since the shootings, Ronald C. Rice, a councilman who is allied with Mr. Booker, has proposed an ordinance that would require the police to contact federal authorities about illegal immigrants in custody.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/nyregion/19newark.html