Beyond flashlights, "we're doing all we can", and "federal issue"

Here are the answers about immigration enforcement from Dunne, Prigge, and Robins at the LWV forum:
Richard Dunne: First of all, I believe this is a federal issue with a lot of local ramifications. The first thing we have to do is to take care of the local ramifications. Before that, some of the items that needed to be addressed we didn’t take an opportunity to address. There’s training of our police department. Our police department could have gone to receive training from ICE. We didn’t avail ourselves of that training. Fifteen months we’ve waited for ICE to respond back to us. That was fifteen months too long. The program today is not being funded. We do not know if the funding is going to come back. If it comes back the police department should avail themselves of that, because they might come back with a lot of great, creative ideas on how to handle the situation. Without that training, we don’t know. But in the meantime we need to make sure that we enforce all of the adopted codes of the city of Elgin. Those are the codes on property maintenance which come into overcrowding, and all of the other codes of the city of Elgin. Property maintenance is very particular to be enforced to make sure that we don’t have any issues of overcrowding which comes down to a life/safety issue that need to be addressed as a life/safety issue across the entire city.

John Prigge: Illegal aliens and illegal immigration in Elgin is it’s #1 problem. I’ve said that since the very, very beginning. Is the city doing everything? Absolutely not. We asked for ICE help 15 months ago and haven’t gotten it, and haven’t followed up and asked. I wouldn’t wait for a magazine subscription to start for 15 months. I wouldn’t wait for a doctor appointment for 15 months. I sure as heck would never wait 15 months to ask the federal government to follow up on a letter. We need to form a coalition as is being done in every city on other issues…form a coalition with other cities to go to the federal government, to go to ICE, and say, “Look, we need help. We’ve not a citizen base of 107,000 asking. We are a coalition of cities asking for help.” This needs to be done. There are solutions that I have on my website and accurately portrayed in the Daily Herald a few days ago. The issue is, forming a coalition and treating the problem. You can’t solve it. It is a federal issue. It is, to solve it. But to treat it, we can do some things to make Elgin not so pretty for this type of activity.

Mike Robins: There’s a little waffling going on all over the place with this tonight. Some of the things that were brought up are definitely racial profiling. When you look at my website there’s a constructive issues to what we can do with landlords and what we can enforce with their renters license as far as overcrowding and illegal immigration. A lot of the issues lately brought up with the economy, OK, illegal immigration has some strong impact with the economy. Some of the incumbents bring up this lawsuit situation. It’s a scare tactic. I talked to judges about this; not attorneys, judges. There’s things the city can continue to follow through on that’s not going to get a lawsuit started. The city did apply for the ACCESS situation through ICE, but the city did NOT request the 287g. So we do have Operation Shield going on, and a few other things. Again, we can’t put everything on the police department. We can’t put everything on the chief.