By Jacques Billeaud
The Associated Press
Police agencies in Arizona have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training officers to enforce the state’s immigration law, despite claims from supporters that it wasn’t going to cost much extra for the state’s 15,000 officers to carry out the statute.
An informal survey by The Associated Press of selected police departments and a state agency that trains officers shows that seven agencies have spent a combined $640,000 on training that focused heavily on the law’s requirement that officers, while enforcing other laws, question people’s immigration status if they’re believed to be in the country illegally. Other agencies were surveyed, but said no training-cost estimates were available.
A federal judge gave police the go-ahead to start enforcing the law’s questioning requirement on Sept. 18 after a two-year court battle waged by the Obama administration, immigrant-rights advocates and others.
Lost in all the heated political rhetoric surrounding the law was the question about how much it would cost to carry out.
