Letter: Sheriff should leave federal laws to federal officers

Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner should let federal dollars pay for immigration enforcement.

Your previous writers have missed the reason many of us disagree with Tanner’s proposal to establish a unit in his department to enforce federal immigration laws.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with our current immigration laws, they are federal laws and as such should be enforced by federal officers chartered to enforce them and paid for with federal dollars.

I can think of many ways to spend additional county tax dollars, but this isn’t one of them. The sheriff hasn’t provided any information that immigrants are more likely than anyone else to break the state and local laws we pay him to enforce. National studies (from both sides of the political spectrum) show that immigrants actually commit fewer crimes and are less likely to be imprisoned than native-born Americans.

We appreciate the work of our first respondents and law enforcement — we just want Tanner to keep doing the job our county tax dollars are intended for and not take on someone else’s.

This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 11:12 AM with the headline "Letter: Sheriff should leave federal laws to federal officers."