Warwick Police Chief Stephen McCartney, left, U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente, standing, and Julie Myers, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at the law enforcement training session.

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The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE -- More than 70 police commanders from nearly every department in Rhode Island met privately yesterday morning to discuss methods to handle the illegal immigration issue.

Col. Brendan Doherty, the superintendent of the state police, had called for this meeting, held jointly with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to talk about his agency’s policies and what the state police have learned from their encounters with the issue, in hopes of sharing their ideas with the local police. David Riccio, the resident-agent-in-charge of the ICE office in Providence, was there to discuss immigration laws and the federal agency’s jurisdiction.

“This will give us the tools to uphold the law in a fair –– a fair –– and equitable manner,” Doherty emphasized, shortly before closing the rest of the meeting to the media.

The issue is not unusual to Rhode Island, or anywhere else in the country, where state and local law enforcement agencies can differ on how they handle illegal immigration. Here in Rhode Island, the chiefs of the largest cities say that illegal immigrants are a very small portion of their work in public safety.

“This is not something new,” said Warwick Police Chief Stephen McCartney, the president of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association. “I realize this debate is a very difficult debate. I realize this is an emotional issue, but there is a public safety component to this problem.”

This controversial and nationally unresolved issue hit home in Rhode Island in April, when Governor Carcieri issued an executive order meant to crack down on illegal immigrants. Part of the order included directives to the state police and Department of Corrections to form agreements with ICE to identify and detain illegal immigrants. Another directive urged local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of people being investigated, taken into custody or arrested for a crime.

The events in the last several months have shown how emotionally charged the matter of immigration is, said U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente. “Every-one in law enforcement operates under a microscope all the time, where people will hold you to very high standards. That’s why it’s important to have this group,” Corrente told the assembly gathered in a conference room at the Department of Administration building. “If you’re going to do this kind of work, it’s important that you do it right.”

Doherty had all of his troopers trained earlier this year in the basic immigration program that ICE offers for law enforcement –– understanding different immigration documents, recognizing document fraud, and how to address illegal immigration in police work.

Doherty said that the state police have received few complaints, except from “advocacy groups who say they’re speaking on behalf of immigrants.”

“We embrace the immigrant community,” Doherty said. However, he added, “there’s something very wrong when it becomes politically incorrect to arrest illegal immigrants who are breaking the law.”

The flashpoint for the illegal-immigration controversy in Rhode Island came early this summer, when a Guatemalan man was arrested in June for allegedly carjacking and raping a woman. Marco Riz had been ordered deported by a federal immigration judge last Halloween, but was still in Rhode Island.

When questions arose about why Riz hadn’t been deported before the alleged rape, ICE blamed the Providence police, who had arrested Riz last year for a misdemeanor. ICE said that the police should have checked Riz’s immigration status through the agency’s Law Enforcement Support Center in Vermont, which has access to all immigration records and would have alerted ICE to Riz’s arrest. The Providence police have said that they found no warrant from ICE for Riz in the national criminal database, and that ICE didn’t respond when Providence police faxed an arraignment sheet with Riz’s name to the federal office.

Without naming the department, Governor Carcieri swiped at the Providence police during the meeting, saying the Marco Riz case was the reason he’d asked Doherty to organize this gathering and bring all of law enforcement work together and “use the same technology.”

Two of Providence’s top police commanders were at the meeting. (Providence is now using the LESC system.) “We’re much more similar with all of the other police departments than dissimilar,” Providence Deputy Chief Paul Kennedy said afterward. “We’re all doing the same thing. We all face the same challenges. We’re all coming up with the best way to deal with this issue, and I think that’s smart.”

The state Department of Corrections is considering using the ICE system as well, as backup for the ICE agent who regularly reviews the department’s own database of inmates. Carcieri’s executive order directs the Department of Corrections and Parole Board to work with ICE to provide for the parole and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants. A.T. Wall, director of the Department of Corrections, said the discussion at the meeting gave him a clear understanding of the jurisdiction of ICE and what the laws require of the federal agency.

That’s what Doherty and Maj. Stephen O’Donnell, the deputy state police superintendent, had intended. O’Donnell had presented the state police policies and procedures and discussed the state’s statute on racial profiling at the meeting.

“I told everybody this is generic training. We are not dictating policies and procedures to them. We can’t dictate to them,” O’Donnell said. “We thought of making everyone informed of what we do … because we seem to be on the forefront of this.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this report incorrectly gave the date of Marco Riz's arrest for a misdemeanor last year.

amilkovi@projo.com