New laws remove obstacles for DACA recipients who want to become police officers
California and Colorado have passed laws that would permit noncitizens authorized to work in the U.S. to become police officers, while New Jersey and other states consider similar legislation.
Christian Mendoza-Almendarez, a 30-year-old DACA recipient, considers moving to Colorado to become a law enforcement officer.Jordan Vonderhaar for NBC News
July 16, 2023, 10:00 AM CDT
By Janelle Griffith
As police departments struggle to recruit and retain officers, some look to a previously untapped pool of applicants to fill job vacancies.
States, including California and Colorado, have begun to pass laws that would permit noncitizens who are authorized to work in the U.S. to become police officers, while others, such as New Jersey, mull similar legislation. The measures make recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program eligible for law enforcement work.
Beneficiaries of the DACA program have historically been barred from holding jobs in law enforcement because of various provisions in state laws.
The DACA program, which provides protections against deportation for people who arrived in the United States without legal status before turning 16 and who have lived in the country continuously since at least 2007, has about 580,000 active recipients in the United States.
Christian Alberto Mendoza-Almendarez, 30, is among them. He was brought to the U.S. at age 7 after his family fled Mexico’s drug cartels.
He has wanted to be a police officer since he was a boy watching his father patrol the streets of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. But his immigration status makes him ineligible in Texas, where he serves as a neighborhood liaison with the Austin Police Department.
He's thinking about moving to California or Colorado to fulfill his dream.
“We’re not here to change the requirements,” he said. “These people have what it takes to become a police officer.”
Before changing its law last year, California required that police officers, or peace officers, be U.S. citizens or permanent residents who were eligible for and applied for citizenship.
In Colorado, DACA recipients previously could not legally carry firearms. Colorado’s new measure, which was signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis in April, does away with that prohibition.
"It's a smart policy, especially with fewer and fewer people wanting to go into law enforcement," said Art Acevedo, the interim chief of police for the Aurora Police Department in Colorado, which has 71 open positions.
Acevedo, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba with his family as a young child and headed police departments in Houston, Austin and briefly in Miami, said a person’s nation of origin should have no bearing on their suitability for a career in law enforcement.
Supporters of similar measures have noted that noncitizens who are authorized to work in the U.S. can already serve in the military, making law enforcement work a natural extension.
Critics of such legislation, however, say careers in law enforcement should be reserved for U.S. citizens and that noncitizens should not be able to carry firearms or possess the power to arrest citizens.
Chapin Rose, a Republican member of the Illinois Senate, blasted the legislation that passed the state House and Senate but has not been signed into law, saying during a recent hearing that “there is a greater principle at stake.”
“It’s just a fundamentally bad idea,” he said during the hearing in May. “I don’t care where this individual is from. Australia — they should not be able to arrest a United States citizen on United States soil.”
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