New immigration laws are drawing debate around the United States.
Arizona's governor signed the toughest illegal immigration bill in the country last week. Some Ohio politicians want to mirror it, ONN's Jim Heath reported.
"Go somewhere else, don't come here. Go to some other state where it's ok to take their resources," said Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones. "Ohio's limited on resources. Our jails are full. We don't need people coming from other countries to fill our courts, our jails."
Jones and state representative Courtney Combs are pushing Gov. Ted Strickland to support tough illegal immigration bills.
The law signed last week made it a crime to be in Arizona illegally. It also allows police to question people about their immigration status, even if there is no reason to suspect they are in the country illegally.
Many groups worry the law opens the door for racial profiling.
President Barack Obama said he's asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether the law is legal.
One former border police chief said following the Arizona example is a bad idea.
"The problem is this is a Dirty Harry, simplistic, law enforcement solution to a very complex political issue," said Dr. Richard Weinblatt.
He spent years working along the border and said an Arizona-type law can lead to lawsuits.
"The building blocks of reasonable suspicion for that will be things like the person is dark-colored, the person has an accent, well any which way you slice it that is racial profiling," Weinblatt said.
"They can't profile. I don't believe any good law enforcement officer is going to profile," said David Ray, a member of the Ohio Minutemen.
Ray thinks the concern about racial profiling is overblown, but admitted there are extreme views from some anti-immigration advocates.
"They're saying call Greyhound and load them up and let's pay them out, in fact, I'll pay the bill. But I don't think most people believe that," Ray said.
Weinblatt worries that any law with so many questions could do more damage than good.
"This sets law enforcement back 10 or 15 years. We've worked so hard in law enforcement to try to make inroads into communities," Weinblatt said. "This is going to kill community policing."
Ray said a tougher law can't be bad.
"I think as long as it mirrors the federal law and they do special training with these officers in the state of Ohio, I'm certainly not against it," said Ray.
Strickland may have settled the issue when he announced, "if the Arizona law was presented to me and I were governor I would not sign it."
Jones recently settled a lawsuit with an illegal immigrant who claimed deputies went too far in arresting him. That lawsuit cost Butler County taxpayers $100,000.
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