Dane County has an immigration problem. No, it’s not that our mostly vanilla slice of Wisconsin is being taken over by our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters to the south. Rather, our immigration problem is embodied by a persecutory law enforcement establishment that is successfully developing a culture of fear and distrust among the most vulnerable members of our community.

It is not easy to be an immigrant in this country, and, as the years go by, our inept political leadership has proven itself utterly unable to address draconian immigration laws that have transformed the land of opportunity into a foreboding land of pitfalls and legal trip-wires. Several years ago, the state of Wisconsin made it illegal for undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses. Aside from codifying the xenophobic passion for marginalization that has come to characterize our nation’s right wing, the law has made our roads less safe and made the task of identifying recently arrived persons exponentially more difficult. The latter point has actually been a fortuitous development for Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney, who has a penchant for terrorizing the community’s immigrant population.

Mahoney, a Democrat, has made a habit of reporting the undocumented individuals his office picks up to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, supposedly in an effort to identify them — even though various other means exist. Unlike his Republican predecessor who abstained from this gratuitous punishment for minor offenders, Mahoney offers these people to the feds on a completely voluntary basis. Well over 100 immigrants have been held and deported from the area over the past two years. And it isn’t just superficial criminals that are pinched.

In a well-publicized case from earlier this year, a young woman and her mother were deported after a tip from the Sheriff’s office. The woman — a mother originally from Honduras — had gone to the Dane County Courthouse attempting to change the surname of her and her children. She sought to do so in order to protect her family from an abusive and violent husband from whom she had recently separated. Noticing she had an outstanding immigration warrant from over a decade earlier, the bailiff notified ICE, after which she was quickly arrested and interrogated while agents raided her home, arrested her mother and scoured the residence for information that might lead them to other undocumented individuals in the neighborhood.

Call me a softie, but illegal or not, this seems like a rotten way to treat people that haven’t committed a crime and were, all things considered, honest working people just trying to get by and raise a family in the land of the free.

Now, before the blood-thirsty xenophobes blow their stacks in response to my sympathy for illegal aliens, consider the ramifications for this kind of policy. By making it clear that local law enforcement is out to get you if you are in this country illegally — whether you just run a red light or stupidly walk down the street with an open beer, the cops can pick you up and will likely notify the feds if you can’t prove your citizenship — we are nurturing a stultifying culture of fear in our immigrant communities. That culture, not unlike the policy that keeps illegals out of driver’s education classes, is making our community less safe.

For instance, imagine a mother in an abusive relationship in a predominantly Latino part of town. She may desperately seek protection and justice from law enforcement and the courts, but could very well be even more fearful of losing her family’s chief breadwinner. Hesitant to call the police and risk the deportation of an abusive spouse or boyfriend, or even the loss of an undocumented friend or family member, she continues to be abused, robbed of the recourse to which she should be entitled. Indeed, the immigrant community is forced to fear a police presence in the neighborhood. Such trepidation clearly diminishes safety and quality of life.

We must ask ourselves: Is this the kind of community we want to live in? Such an unenlightened policy by the Sheriff’s Department facilitates a certain degree of lawlessness in communities, the consequences of which can be felt throughout the city as certain areas veil real criminals by reducing law enforcement accessibility.

In recent months, it has become increasingly clear that Dave Mahoney has his eye set on higher office, possibly vying for a job with the federal government (judging by his work with Obama administration officials earlier this year). Maybe he just wants to strengthen his electoral standing with conservative constituents that adore an “alien hunter.” In any case, it’s time we let Sheriff Mahoney know we want immigrants to feel safe and welcome in our town and that he must immediately stop reporting innocuous undocumented residents.

Sam Stevenson ([email protected]) is a graduate student in public health.