Are the suburban counties inviting terrorists?

An official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said jurisdictions that fail to check the immigration status of people receiving tax-funded rent subsidies are opening the door to terrorists.

“Those are the vulnerabilities that people have exploited in the past to commit acts of terrorism,” said ICE spokesman Garrison K. Courtney.

The Washington Times first reported last week that Arlington and Montgomery counties are the only jurisdictions in the metropolitan area that do not perform the immigration check, creating a loophole that allows illegal aliens to receive county rent assistance.

Officials in Montgomery and Arlington counties defended their hands-off policy, saying that catching illegal immigrants isn’t their responsibility.

“It is the federal government’s role to check the borders and monitor for illegal aliens. It isn’t my job,” said Barbara Favola, Democrat and chairman of the Arlington County Board.

Miss Favola also said an immigration check would be insulting to people seeking aid dollars. “We really work at developing a trust level with all our residents in Arlington,” she said. “I want to be a friendly and welcoming place, period — to anyone who comes within our borders.”

A spokesman for Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan also said immigration enforcement was not the county’s job. And he defended the county’s commitment to the war on terrorism, noting that Montgomery County firefighters and emergency crews were among the first responders to the attacks on the Pentagon and to the anthrax mail attacks on Capitol Hill.

“I’m sure the official at [ICE] is not suggesting that we are not doing our part,” said Duncan spokesman David S. Weaver. “We are full partners with the federal government to protect the homeland in the war against terror.”

Still, he said that Mr. Duncan, a Democrat, prefers leaving immigration enforcement to federal authorities and concentrating local efforts on providing services to county residents. The county does not have the resources to also do ICE’s job, he said.

“We are not in the immigration business,” Mr. Weaver said. “If the federal immigration service needs more staff, they need to lobby Congress for more staff, not rely on local governments to do [the job].”

Both Miss Favola and Mr. Weaver said they were not concerned that taxpayer-funded aid might go to illegals at the expense of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, which has been another criticism of the policy.

Mr. Courtney said he recognized that immigration enforcement was chiefly the federal government’s job, but he lamented that some jurisdictions offer no help.

“Obviously, we are the federal agency that has to enforce the laws, and part of that is reaching out to the local governments,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that, in some instances, it is not reciprocal.”

Officials in the District and Fairfax, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties said they check the immigration status of applicants for local housing subsidies.

Montgomery County spends about $3.7 million a year on rent assistance for 1,600 households, and Arlington County will spend about $3 million this year on housing grants for 680 households. Neither jurisdiction uses an available federal database to screen for illegal immigrants receiving aid, despite estimates that Virginia is home to more than 100,000 illegal aliens and Maryland home to more than 50,000.

There are no exact numbers on how many illegal immigrants reside in Arlington and Montgomery counties, nor how many receive rent subsidies.

Immigration researchers estimate that 10 million illegal aliens reside in the United States and about 34,000 of them receive rent assistance as heads of households.

For nearly a decade, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ alien-status verification database has been available to local governments. But verifying applicants to programs financed with county or state funds is optional.

The database check has been mandatory since 1995 for applicants to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, the locally administered and federally funded rent subsidy formerly known as the Section 8 program.

Officials in the District and every county in the metropolitan area, including Montgomery and Arlington counties, said they always use the database to screen applicants for the federal rent vouchers.

Mr. Weaver said that Montgomery County complies with all federal mandates to check immigration status. “Where there is no federal requirement,” he said, “we adopt the position that we are in the service business and we do not want to impede the delivery of those services.”