The Seattle Times today runs an AP story datelined Boston which highlights an attempted federal crackdown on illegal immigrant criminals in the U.S., including deportees who're still here. The story notes:

In a blitz that began May 26, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested nearly 2,100 illegal immigrants across the country. Officials said the raids had caught child molesters, gang members and other violent criminals, as well as people...who sneaked back into the country after a judge threw them out. The crackdown is called Operation Return to Sender.

..The challenge, agents said, is staggering. There are more than 500,000 people who have been deported by judges and either slipped back into the country or never left. There is often a disconnect between local and state prisons and the federal government that allows illegal immigrants to serve time and be released without being transferred to federal officials for deportation.

Hmmm. How could that be?

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The Rocky Mountain News Monday noted a 2005 federal study which found that among illegal immigrants in state and federal prisons convicted for aggravated felonies and expected to eventually be deported, the average number of arrests was eight.

Often-understaffed police departments need federal assistance and clear Congressional authorization to check and better communicate to other law enforcement agencies the illegal immigration status of felony arrestees. And the immigration status of lower-level criminals such as repeat DUI offenders would also be a useful tool which could save lives, if the information were gathered in a timely manner and federal law were changed to permit deportation of such individuals, the Rocky Mountain News notes in this sidebar.

But prisons are especially unlikely to know the immigration status of any of their inmates if the police who made the initial arrests aren't allowed to find out. Ordinances like that which the Seattle City Council adopted in 2003 bar police from checking on the immigration status of arrestees unless they already have reason to believe the suspect was previously deported, came back to the U.S. following deportation, and is or was commiting a felony crime.

This definition of what's effectively a "reasonable cause" clause for immigration status inquiry upon arrest emphasizes symbolic civil rights protections over border security and enforcement of existing law. Any arrestee who has not crossed the border illegally should have nothing to fear from an immigration status check. But we are cowed by The Left into believing it is somehow discriminatory because in fact most illegal immigrants to the U.S., and thus many of the illegal immigrants arrested for other offenses once here, are from Mexico. "Disproportional" outcomes; ughh.

Just last Saturday The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported indictments were returned against 20 people, mostly Mexican, who were among 91 recently charged in connection with a huge Tijuana-Washington state drug ring selling heroin, cocaine and meth to users here.

The two-year investigation called "Dry Ice" involved a sophisticated network including drug suppliers and organizers from Tijuana, Mexico; drivers who smuggled the contraband up the Interstate 5 corridor through California to Western Washington; and a network of local street dealers called the "Americanos," who peddled the drugs in Seattle, Tacoma and Yakima, prosecutors said.

Seattle police and the feds cooperated on the investigation that led to the arrests. How many of those arrested were here illegally? With the feds involved in this particular case, we should be able to learn that information regardless of Seattle's restrictions on checking. That is, assuming an engaged and responsible mainstream media. But the P-I's Saturday report was mute on the subject. There's another "disconnect" to ponder.

The Tijuana-Washington drug smuggling ring may have been large but it was not isolated. And sometimes police connect the dots. Last month, the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Arizona reported on another cross-border drug operation, this one clearly involving illegal immigrants. State and federal authorities arrested 62 human smugglers, hundreds of illegal immigrants and recovered 62 vehicles, six properties, $4.8 million in cash and five kilos of cocaine in a bust of multiple "coyote groups" which included some smaller operations involved in smuggling people and drugs. In Wilson County, North Carolina, police busted and identified five men as illegal immigrants tied to a 14-pound cache of cocaine.

Having flouted the law once, it becomes easier for some illegal immigrants to commit more crimes, ones that in contrast to sneaking across the border, may actually earn them penalties. Immediate deportation becomes a "get-out-of-jail free" card, especially if as now, they can illegally re-enter the U.S. with ease. Those convicted should continue to pay with imprisonment, but subsequent deportation without real border enforcement is meaningless. Additionally, front-end identification of illegal immigrant arrestees must be strengthened by granting freedom for local law enforcement to identify them in an appropriate but non-discriminatory manner.

Therefore, any federal immigration reform law approved later this year should include a provision that local law enforcement must require proof of citizenship or legal residency from all felony arrestees, and must notify ICE if the arrestees are here illegally. ICE must then be granted sufficient resources to eradicate the "disconnect" and deport illegal immigrants after their prison terms expire. This objective, like the continuing flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico itself, underscores the broader need for real border enforcement. Without it, everything else envisioned in any immigration reform plan falls apart.