Illegal Immigrant Cops Equals Lawbreakers With Guns

Police tape surrounds a crime scene in Chicago on June 23, 2021. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Commentary

Illinois has just joined Colorado and California on the list of states that explicitly allow noncitizens to become police officers. Given the damage done to our immigration system by the Obama and Biden administrations, that’s a disturbing development.

Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s holding in Foley v. Connelie, states are permitted—but not obligated—to exclude noncitizens from eligibility for positions in state and local law enforcement. According to the Court, “police officers fall within the category of ‘important non-elective ... officers who participate directly in the ... execution ... of broad public policy.”

And, given the broad discretion that police officers are permitted to exercise, “citizenship bears a rational relationship to the special demands of the particular position, and a State may therefore confine the performance of this important public responsibility to those who are citizens.”

Ever since, the vast majority of states have required that applicants who aspire to become cops possess U.S. citizenship. Those states that didn’t mandate citizenship typically limited eligibility to green card holders who intended to apply for naturalization as soon as they became eligible.

From 1978, when the Foley opinion was issued, to the present, those requirements have rarely been questioned. That isn’t surprising. The fact is, despite the radical left’s narrative to the contrary, foreign nationals can lawfully reside in America only if they obtain and keep the federal government’s permission to remain here.

Ultimately, even lawful permanent residents (the official title for individuals with a green card) are subject to removal from the United States if they violate the terms of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Most Americans aren’t comfortable with giving people who aren’t full members of our society the authority to arrest citizens—possibly by means of force.

The Colorado, California, and Illinois laws are particularly troubling because, in all three states, individuals accepted into the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will be eligible to become police officers. Indeed, the so-called DACA kids seem to be the primary target of these pieces of legislation.

Most of the anti-borders lobby would have the public believe that DACA recipients are “protected from deportation” and possess “lawful work authorization,” in essence making them the equivalent of green card holders, only steps away from naturalization. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Congressional Research Service defines (pdf) “Deferred Action” as, “the generic term that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] uses for a decision not to remove an inadmissible or deportable alien pursuant to its enforcement discretion.” The provision of the Code of Federal Regulations that summarizes the DHS authority to grant deferred action refers to it as “an act of administrative convenience that gives some cases lower priority.” In plain English, that means that recipients of deferred action are deportable illegal immigrants, or other immigration violators, that the government has temporarily decided not to remove.