Our e-mail of the week comes from Keith Heflin, who is currently in Nome, Alaska on an annual gold prospecting trip with his sons Josh and Matt:

I often check the Times-Gazette on line to keep up on hometown events and found your story on the DVD "Our Very Own" to be interesting, considering the fact that we have found it on the shelves in the video section of two local stores. I find it amazing the powers that be choose to send the DVD to the land of the midnight sun, but not to the home town from which it was inspired.

Indeed.

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Reading Monday's story in The Tennessean about Maury County Sheriff Enoch George's crackdown on those in nearby Columbia illegally really highlights one of the main problems surrounding immigration laws.

Namely, the laws already exist, but no one really wants to enforce it except the people impacts the most: folks in small rural counties like Maury and Bedford.

The article details the controversy the sheriff has been generating for actually doing his job -- you know, enforcing the law. George says there's no room for lawbreakers in his town and this tough stance has caused his popularity to soar.

Of course, the usual critics are quick to point out that the sheriff "is focusing undue police attention on the county's hard-working Latino community and terrorizing people through roundups."

Imagine that -- lawbreakers terrified about being caught.

The Hispanic residents and those who support them say that Sheriff George "is quietly taking upon himself and his agency to do the job of federal authorities."

Well, somebody has to if the feds won't.

George has found a sly way to do this. He invites along agents from the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] on criminal investigations in neighborhoods with large numbers of illegal immigrants. And he's getting results.

While searching for an alleged child rapist last week, authorities arrested 13 other illegal immigrants. In May, 24 were taken into custody during an investigation about a student who took a gun to school. And in June, 22 were detained while federal agents were looking for a convicted coke dealer.

The best line in the Tennessean story is the unattributed comment from "area police chiefs" who say they haven't been asked to help out because they, unlike the deputies, "don't have the power to arrest people merely for being in the country illegally."

Yeah, it would be just awful and mean-spirited to arrest people who are "merely" breaking the law.

If Tennessee counties want to do something about the illegal immigration problem, there's the federal 287(g) program, which Bedford County is looking at, but there's a ton of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, plus many of the small counties that need it most would probably not be able to afford it because it requires the hiring of extra officers.

Everyone involved in the immigration debate appears to want to pass the buck down the line. And that's what happening in this case --the feds are putting the burden on those small agencies who have few of the resources required to do the task.

Out of the thousands of police agencies around the country, only 21 are currently using the federal 287(g) program and that is far too few. One has to wonder why the federal government is making it so difficult for local cops to do their job for them.

Perhaps, it's because it will be proven that the job can be done, after all.