Jaffrey, N.H. – One day in April, Jorge Mora Ramirez stopped his car on the side of a road in the small southern New Hampshire town of New Ipswich and was making a cellphone call when a New Ipswich police officer approached him.
The officer questioned Ramirez, a 21-year-old Mexican who acknowledged he was in the country illegally, and the New Ipswich police tried to get federal immigration authorities to arrest him.
When immigration officials demurred, not considering Ramirez enough of a priority for their scarce enforcement resources, police took the matter into their own hands.
They took the highly unusual step of charging Ramirez with criminal trespassing.
“I wanted the federal government to understand that I was going to take some type of action,” said New Ipswich Police Chief Garrett Chamberlain. “If I can discourage illegal aliens from coming to or passing through my community, then I think I’ve succeeded.”
At minimum, Chamberlain has succeeded in creating a storm of controversy, as well as interest. Hudson, N.H., Police Chief Richard Gendron has charged 10 illegal immigrants with criminal trespassing. Police departments in other states have called Chamberlain, and immigration experts say that if the New Hampshire charges are upheld, some police departments around the country will likely echo the approach.
Ramirez’s case, which is also being watched by civil liberties advocates and the Mexican government, which is paying for his lawyers, went to court Tuesday.
Ramirez’s lawyers asked Judge Phillips Runyon to dismiss the case, arguing that immigration enforcement is the federal government’s job and that the New Hampshire criminal trespassing statute was intended to apply to intruders on private property, not illegal immigrants.
The prosecutor, Nicole Morse, argued that local police had a right to cite illegal immigrants. “Just as with a sex offender, the hope is that they will go and register with the state and if they don’t, then they are violating the law,” she said.
Runyon deferred his decision on whether to dismiss the case until he has a chance to hear similar motions on the Hudson cases in the coming weeks.