Enforcing Immigration Laws to Protect Immigrants

By Michael Cutler

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Wednesday released a statement that 33-year-old Ninderjit Singh, an Indian citizen, had been arrested in LA  for the killing of 18-year-old Poonam Randhawa in Vancouver in January 1999.

Ninderjit Singh, a Canadian green card holder, had been on the run for 12 years after he allegedly killed a then 18 year old girl Poonam Randhawa, was apprehended as a result of the cooperation of Canadian law enforcement authorities working with ICE and the California Highway Patrol.

What you should pay particular attention to was the way that Singh was identified, by a traffic stop that was conducted by members of the California Highway Patrol.  Whether or not the stop was a so-called “pretext stop” in which a vehicle is targeted for a law enforcement vehicle traffic stop to effectively identify the driver or occupants of a vehicle or if this  was a random stop, the point is that local and state police officers must be able to properly and completely identify individuals that they encounter in course of their official duties.

What is perplexing was that neither the CBS News report on Singh’s arrest nor the ICE press release  addressed how Singh had managed to enter the United States. The only mention of his immigration status was the fact that the suspect is a citizen of India and a lawful immigrant in Canada.

As I have often noted, illegal aliens have many reasons for running our nation’s borders and evading the lawful inspections process.  Among those reasons are aliens who are fugitives in their home country or other country and are seeking to evade the “long arm of the law.”

This is why the immigration status of individuals must be taken into account when those individuals are encountered by law enforcement officers.  Fugitives are often so intent on evading identification and arrest that they are willing to resort to extreme violence in order to prevent being arrested.  This potential for extreme violence poses a threat to alw enforcement and members of the community.

In this case, Singh’s identity was determined by a fingerprint comparison.  While not noted in the report, he may well have provided a set of ID including a driver’s license in a false name when he was stopped by the California Highway Patrol.

The victim of the crime for which Singh is accused of having committed was of the same ethnicity as was Singh.  This is not uncommon.  This is why it is utterly false and misleading to say that enforcing the immigration laws are “anti-immigrant.” Immigrant communities of all ethnicities and origins are most at risk to the crimes committed by transnational gangs and criminals as well as alien fugitives who are most likely to attempt to “hide in plain sight” by moving into  immigrant communities comprised of people who are of the same ethnicity.  They do this not only because they are most comfortable in such communities where they most easily relate to the people who live in those communities and are able to eat the foods that they are accustomed to but also know that it is far easier to go undetected by living in such communities where they may also expect the residents to have an “Us against them” mentality and harbor them from law enforcement if they conceal their criminal backgrounds and simply claim to be illegal aliens.

The law enforcement officers who were involved in the apprehension of this fugitives accomplished a job “well done” but there are many, many more bad guys “out there” who continue to pose a risk.  The effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws, including having adequate numbers of ICE personnel, would certainly be of great value in enhancing national security and national security- missions for which our federal government needs to be made accountable.