The New York Sun:Judge Rejects Immigration Lawsuit Brought by La Raza A judge has dismissed a legal challenge to the federal government's alleged practice of enlisting local police officers to arrest immigrants who are here illegally. In dismissing the lawsuit on procedural grounds, Judge Leo Glasser of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn left unanswered the central question posed in the lawsuit: whether federal law enforcement officials, without authorization by Congress, can ask local police to share their immigration enforcement duties? At issue is the type of information that the federal government is allowed to post on the National Crime Information Center database. The database has long provided local police across the country access to information about federal fugitives charged with crimes. Police officers around the country access the database in the course of daily policing and routine traffic stops. In a lawsuit filed in 2003 on behalf of several nonprofit organizations, lawyers allege that federal authorities began adding information regarding immigration violations to the database. That decision unconstitutionally involved local police officers around the country, the plaintiffs argued.

[Our take: The central question of whether federal law enforcement officials, without authorization by Congress, can ask local police to share their immigration enforcement duties, is completely bogus. Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1996, passed by Congress and signed into law, expressly authorizes federal law enforcement authorities to enter into agreements with local police to share immigration enforcement duties. Case closed.]