NEWARK, Aug. 23 — One local police chief called it a publicity stunt. In a sheriff’s office, the directive was passed out at roll call, by officials anxious to quickly comply. And another chief — one of many who spoke on the condition he not be named for fear of ruffling the feathers of the state’s top law enforcement officer — said it seemed like a recipe for racial profiling.

A day after New Jersey’s attorney general, Anne Milgram, ordered local law enforcement agencies to start inquiring about the immigration status of the people they arrest, local officials and advocates for immigrants across the state began grappling with how the edict would change the already complicated relationship between the authorities and immigrants on the streets they patrol.

In Englewood, where the police estimate that up to a fifth of the population of 26,000 are illegal immigrants, the authorities have long asked about immigration status, so “this doesn’t change things at all,” according to Arthur O’Keefe, the deputy police chief. But in Freehold, where a lawsuit recently ended attempts by borough officials to fine day laborers, a new police chief, on the job for only seven weeks, said he was still trying to divine what Ms. Milgram’s instructions actually meant.

“I’m not sure how we’re going to go about enacting it on the local level,” said the chief, Mitchell E. Roth, adding that his 34 full-time officers do not routinely ask about immigration status. “We have special-interest groups. We have to be very diplomatic.”

[ EDIT ] Diplomatic my Southern a$$ — these Illegals aren’t diplomatic when it comes to killing natural-born Americans on our streets — C’MON COPS — WAKE THE HELL UP AND DO YOUR DAMN JOBS OF “TO PROTECT AND SERVE”!

Arrest of an Illegal Immigrant in a brutal triple homicide here this month