EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — New El Paso County Sheriff Oscar Ugarte said his office is not focused on enforcing immigration law, but rather on addressing crimes affecting El Pasoans.
“I think it’s a bad idea for the federal government to force local law enforcement to enforce immigration law,” Ugarte said. “First of all, we do not have the training. We do not have the resources. As it stands right now, I am short on detention officers working at the jail. I am short on deputies patrolling our community. And the infrastructure, our county jails, are almost at capacity, so I do not have the bed space available.”
Ugarte said they will continue to collaborate and maintain their strong relationship with federal authorities, and that he does not expect that to change. Ugarte said they have and will continue to take in individuals arrested by federal immigration officials, and hold them at local county jails.
If President Donald Trump does try to force local authorities to expand their duties to enforce immigration law, Ugarte said he worries that a community like El Paso will lose trust in his office, and that it will disrupt his deputies’ ability to respond to the needs of the community.
“I think it’s going to create a divide between local law enforcement and the community. I think a lot of crime is going to go unreported, and we’re going to have victims that will not have justice because of that fear. We will continue to work. Our priority is not immigration. I think we have a lot of pressing local issues that our community should focus on,” Ugarte said.
Regarding a memo sent out by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this week, directing its prosecutors to investigate any state and local officials that obstruct Trump’s immigration policies, Ugarte said the language is concerning but that he is confident his office is not impeding in any way.
However, Ugarte said that the directives being sent down from the White House are very vague. He said that they will have to closely analyze the language of Trump’s executive orders or the DOJ’s guidelines to ensure that they’re legal, and that his office is able to understand how not to conflict with the mandates.
“Let’s say I don’t have the resources to actually help the federal government. Is that going to be considered impeding? Is it going to require us to hire more deputies to comply with those orders? Is there funding attached to those mandates? So we really need to sit down and understand, get more clarification,” Ugarte said.
In his first 24 days in office, Ugarte said he has prioritized going out to patrol stations around the County to assess call volumes in different areas and where they will need to increase their staff.
“If we need to request more staff, I’m preparing for when I go to the next budget talks to present to the Commissioners Court,” Ugarte said. “We have seen a lot of growth within the last few years on the East Side of communities that we patrol. So we definitely need an increase of deputies because the number of deputies patrolling per shift on the East Side communities has not increased in a couple of years.”
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