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Our View: It will take more than deportations
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Every time an illegal immigrant becomes the subject of a public spotlight because of some terrible crime, there's an inevitable chorus that Arizona would have fewer innocent victims if law enforcement would just "round up all of the illegals and ship them home." But two recent tragedies in the Valley illustrate how this simplistic round-up mentality is not any panacea for the complex problems bedeviling border security and the U.S. immigration system.
There are chilling similarities between Saturday's death of Highland High School student Kelly Tracy and the Oct. 25 death of Phoenix police officer Shane Figueroa. Both of them were killed in auto accidents allegedly caused by drunken drivers. Both drivers now under arrest had previous DUI convictions and shouldn't have been driving in the first place. And both suspects are believed to be illegal immigrants.
That is, illegal immigrants who had been deported at least once before. In theory, neither Manuel Contreras-Galdean nor Salvador Vivas-Diaz should have been in the United States to put anyone's life in danger. They already had been "rounded up" by federal immigration agents and expelled from this country. But they managed to return, and now they are accused of committing mayhem on Valley streets.
We said on these pages in the days after Figueroa's death that local police do need to devote more attention to making sure that dangerous illegal immigrants aren't slipping through their fingers. Certainly, Tempe should re-examine its practices as both Contreras-Galdean and Vivas-Diaz "earned" their DUI convictions in that city without anyone realizing they didn't belong in the United States.
But directing police to systematically round up illegal immigrants wouldn't make us much safer. The real answer is going to require more ingenuity, patience and resolve.
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