State and local police are badly needed to help overwhelmed federal immigration authorities apprehend illegal aliens in the interior of our country. Illegal aliens outnumber Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents by over 5,000 to one. Only about 2,000 ICE agents are responsible for enforcing the immigration laws in the interior of our country. This number is too small to apprehend more than a fraction of the illegal alien population now here.

More than 600,000 state and local law enforcement officers already come into contact with illegal aliens every day. Many of them, in the course of their normal duties on their regular beat, routinely observe and even stop illegal aliens — for example, for traffic violations. Many of these officers want to help, but are unsure of their authority and so do nothing. The officers who do detain illegal aliens, and then contact federal immigration officials, are frequently told to release the aliens because of a lack of federal personnel to pick them up or process them. Some officers are even prohibited from cooperating with federal officials by state or local laws called "sanctuary policies," which violate federal law.

The courts have agreed that state and local police can enforce any federal law, unless Congress has specifically forbidden enforcement of a particular law. Since Congress has not forbidden the states from enforcing federal immigration laws—both criminal and civil—state and local police have the inherent authority to enforce them.

State and local police, who make up approximately 96 percent of U.S. law enforcement, would be a massive force multiplier for immigration enforcement. Were these state and local police officers to detain and turn over to ICE every illegal alien with whom they come into contact during the normal course of their duties, hundreds of thousands more illegal aliens could be removed from the United States each year. Moreover, this type of enforcement would have a snowball effect because it would encourage illegal aliens to self-deport, rather than face a dramatically increased risk of getting caught and being barred from legal reentry for a period of years.