Question: is there an equivalent term for “chickenhawk” when the issue is crime and public safety rather than war? Because with all the state legislators lately who’ve been playing sheriff with “get-tough” immigration statutes over the objections of, well, actual sheriffs, I think we might need to come up with one.

Here’s the deal. The Department of Homeland Security can enter into these things called 287(g) agreements with local, county and state law enforcement agencies, which authorize those agencies to enforce federal immigration law. The terms of the 287(g) agreements got overhauled last year after massive criticism, but they’re still murky. There are only 63 active 287(g) agreements right now, and a bunch of police chiefs and sheriffs have given various reasons for not pursuing them for their departments, ranging from lack of resources to concern about vulnerability to racial-profiling suits. (When a policy is based on an officer’s authority to apprehend people he suspects to be undocumented immigrants, accusations of racial profiling seem pretty darn likely.)

But most fundamentally, they’re worried that 287(g) flies in the face of community policing. Spencer put up a few posts about this last fall, but I wish more bloggers and scholars explored the parallel between the set of practices and priorities called “pop-centric counterinsurgency” and the set of practices and priorities called “community policing.” In both cases, security is based on cooperation, which is based on trust, which is based on security forces building up capital with the population that demonstrates that they are trustworthy. Local law enforcement is already operating at a trust deficit with the undocumented population in their communities — you try drawing a distinction to someone between the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who wants to deport him and the local police officer who just wants to talk to him about the crime he witnessed and let him go home. So it makes sense that there’s resistance to asking law enforcement to participate actively in alienating and antagonizing a sector of the community. It’s hardly radical or touchy-feely to point out that you don’t protect your citizens by creating unpoliceable neighborhoods.

But apparently, the Arizona and Ohio state legislatures care less about how law enforcement actually works than about finding new ways to crack down on “illegals.” Ohio’s state Senate passed a bill this week which would force its Attorney General to pursue a 287(g) agreement for state police. Meanwhile, the would-be Wyatt Earps in the Arizona state legislature have decided that the statewide 287(g) they already have doesn’t go far enough in pressuring local PDs to shoot themselves in the foot — both houses have now passed bills redefining “trespassing” to include being present in the state without valid immigration documents. This makes an end run around the issues associated with local police enforcing federal immigration law…by inventing state immigration law. (The Arizona bills still need to be reconciled and signed by Governor Jan Brewer, but that’s expected to happen in the next few weeks.)

The Arizona bill is bad for all kinds of reasons, of course. My particular least-favorite provision is the one making it a crime to give your undocumented cousin a lift to the grocery store. But the refusal of these domestic chickenhawks to listen to the people who are actually enforcing their policies — and trying to keep their streets safe — really gets me. Sure, it would be dangerous to give law enforcement officers the amount of deference given to David Petraeus circa 2007, but would it really be the end of the world to inculcate a little bit of a domestic equivalent to “listening to the generals on the ground”?

Permadisclaimer: My opinions on immigration politics and policy are entirely my own and are in no way associated with my employer or any other organization. Likewise, my taste in music is entirely my own and is in no way associated with the proprietor of this blog, who has given Spoon a resounding “meh.”