The Herndon Police Department will officially become the first municipal law enforcement agency in the nation to undergo U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) training when seven local police officers begin training on Tuesday, May 15, according to local and federal authorities.
Training courses will take place five days a week at the Herndon Police Department headquarters on the 300 block of Herndon Parkway, according to Michael Gilhooly, spokesperson for ICE. The seven local officers will be joined in the ICE-hosted classes with deputies from the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office in Marietta, Ga., and other locally-based federal agents, Gilhooly added.
The training will last approximately five weeks and will allow trained Herndon officers some authority, under the supervision of ICE senior special agents, to enforce federal immigration laws, according to ICE sources. Under a Herndon Town Council-approved agreement, trained officers will be able to work with ICE to initiate deportation proceedings on people living in the country illegally who are convicted of serious crimes such as murder, robbery and sexual assault, as well as driving while intoxicated.
While he would not reveal the specific duties of the officers who will be trained, Lt. Jerry Keys of the Herndon Police Department said that at least one will be a general operations patrol officer. Participating authorities will learn to evaluate foreign national identification for authenticity, conditions of the varying levels of federal immigration status and civil rights, according to ICE.
Officers participating in the training will substitute their regular police duties for the full-time classes during the course of the program, Keys said. Some of the officers may not be present on the first days of training due to ongoing court cases that require their presence, he added.
The program agreement with ICE, known as "287(g) training" after its section in the federal Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996, was approved by the Town Council in March. At the time, training dissenters cited potential damage to community policing efforts with Herndon's immigrant population, which makes up nearly a third of the town's population, according to census figures.
Mayor Steve DeBenedittis, Police Chief Toussaint Summers and several council members have stated that the training is being pursued to give local police as many options as possible for policing the town. Council members have drawn fire from immigration advocacy groups, who say that their recent actions targeting illegal immigrants, including the approval of the training, create a hostile environment in Herndon to immigrants, regardless of their immigration status.