SCOTUS Decision Will Help States Chart Course on Immigration Enforcement
The Supreme Court decision on Arizona’s most recent immigration law is a welcome endorsement of what is already a standard best practice among many local law enforcement agencies around the country; namely, checking the immigration status of offenders or suspects if they can’t promptly show they are present in the United States legally. The Court ruled unanimously that requiring local officers to take this step is not necessarily “mandated racial profiling” nor a civil rights violation, as critics had claimed, thus upholding a key part of the state’s effort to restore the rule of law and deter illegal settlement in the face of federal neglect.
Arizona did not get a green light from the court, however, to prosecute minor immigration offenses as state offenses, which would have enabled them to step into the vacuum of enforcement created by the Obama administration’s minimalist enforcement policies.
Eleven of the 14 sections of SB 1070 are left standing — clearly a win for Arizona. This latest ruling, together with last year’s blessing of Arizona’s requirement for every employer to use E-Verify to check the status of newly hired workers, should encourage other states to act. Legislators now have the guidance they’ve been waiting for to write bills that will be effective in this arena and survive legal challenges from anti-enforcement groups.
The part of the law that most observers had focused on, melodramatically dubbed by journalists as the “show me your papers” provision, is the part that the court endorsed. Found in Section 2(B), it requires Arizona law enforcement officers to make a reasonable attempt, “when practicable,” to determine a person’s immigration status during a “lawful stop, detention, or arrest” if there is a reasonable suspicion “that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States.” Officers can do this by asking the person for identification and evidence of status, or by asking the federal government if it has a record of this person. Under federal law, the Department of Homeland Security is obliged to answer such requests.
Governor Jan Brewer has called this the “heart” of the law. It is important for several reasons. Most significantly, it sets a state-wide standard for how local police and sheriffs will deal with non-citizens they encounter. It prevents local politicians from directing police to look the other way at obvious immigration violations and establishing their jurisdictions as sanctuaries for criminal aliens.
Arizona has enormous crime problems and violence that relate to illegal immigration, and inadequate border control, including alien smuggling, drug trafficking, kidnappings, vehicle theft, and money laundering. As the Court noted (based on a study I did with a colleague), a disproportionate number of felonies in Maricopa County, the population center of Arizona, are committed by illegal aliens. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) estimates that this year in Arizona, nearly 27,000 aliens will be arrested by local officers for other crimes. ICE agents do not know who or where the illegal alien offenders are unless they are notified by local officers. Now, with local officers checking on status, criminal aliens are much less likely to slip through the cracks and much more likely to be sent home. This will prevent future crimes, spare future victims, and save taxpayer money.
Immigration enforcement critics have insisted that the law “mandates racial profiling.” This is nonsense. Aside from the fact that the law explicitly forbids racial profiling, it is important to remember that the law permits the status checks only in the context of a legitimate law enforcement encounter — officers may not detain people just to ask if they are here legally. They must have detained them for another infraction, and must have “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status before they can make the immigration inquiry, which is even more stringent than what federal law already allows. Only those illegal aliens caught breaking other laws have something to fear from this measure.
“Arizonans will not have to wait for federal agents to find and remove them, because the illegal immigrants will continue filtering home on their own.” No need to go “home.” California beakons you.
The reasons not to have this law seem kind of lame. They could apply to any law, existing or proposed. Seems to me, if a cop wants to abuse his authority (or indulge in racial profiling), he can do it any time he wants – whether he’s making a traffic stop or investigating a complaint or deciding whether or not to shoot an armed suspect.
We will overturn the Supreme Court. We have the numbers & the power to overturn the Supreme Court — and we will in November. You aging, shrinking, dying gringos are violently lashing out at us, as you near your demise — but we are here, in our ancestral homeland, and we are not going anywhere.
You thieving gringos stole the Southwest from us; we are now taking it back. We are the dominant force in the Southwest, and we are the swing voters in the swing states — Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Georgia. If the Republicans try starting a war with the Latino community, we will mobilize and defeat them. If the GOP doesn’t come to terms with us, they will pay the price.
Our Reconquista is nearly complete. Good riddance to the aging, dying gringos. Viva La Raza!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnTus_i2aZI&feature=plcp
Bill Whittle disagrees.
If you don’t like the USA, no one is keeping you here. You are free to leave. Try the paradise that is Cuba, or Mexico, or Nicaragua, or Venezuela. I am sure you will find living better there than here, in particular, because we like to talk English here.
Actually, very few natives in the Norte were Mexicans when the gringos were moving west. They were mostly Indios whom the Mexicans feared. In fact the Alamo war was started because the Mexican government tried to welch on their promise of land in exchange for the clearing out the Comanches in Texas, to mostly the Irish who were dispised in the cities and went to the frontier for a better life. So you see you people would still be in superstitious darkness, if it weren’t for the Irish, Germans, and Spanish.
God Bless.
You’re lucky we don’t take more. Go back to your sh**ty little country and just be happy we don’t kick your asses again.
Hey, chorizo breath: I don’t think you are the dominant force in the southwest. The great state of New Mexico has a Latina Governor, Latino Lt. Governor, and Latina Secretary of State, all Republicans who are committed to cleaning up the fraud in our state associated with elections and immigration. They are awesome and will kick your punk ass so hard you will have to re-enter Mexico through Guatemala.
Thank you, La Raza, for coming forward and declaring and confirming that La Raza is a terrorist organization intent on overthrowing the US. Usually the DOJ has to do a lot of investigative work to get to this point. What a money saver you have been in declaring your own guilt. If you would like to help even more, go away and save the cost of deportation.
We paid for it. Texas rebelled and formed a new country. That country later joined the US. The rest of it was paid for.
as some comedian said” we stole the part with the jobs and the good roads”
SCOTUS is right on this one: immigration, the biggest component of sovereignty, is the exclusive preserve of the federal government. This is so because of the freedom of movement between states.
***
The critically important question, of course, was not addressed at all: non-enforcement of the duly passed immigration law. Betcha if Scalia or Thomas were asked about that (they won’t be, again of course), they’s given the truthful and thereby simple answer that such a law for that problem is already on the books: impeach the judge, official, legislator or president who breaks the law.
Where is that law on the books: in the U.S. Constitution.
TOTAL SUBJECT CHANGE: Obamacare was never passed, never duly legislated. It was put into force by direct subversion of the law, which is not nearly as artful as the non-enforcement of it.
SCOTUS is right on this one: immigration, the biggest component of sovereignty, is the exclusive preserve of the federal government.
How odd that the US Constitution says nothing of the sort.
How odd that the US Constitution says nothing of the sort.
Nothing about what? Funny, not odd, that I just read the articles and clauses in the U.S. Constitution that you say it’s too bad they don’t exist, and they do. But, let’s be the opposite of odd, normal, and agree to disagree on whether your RINO plaids change to stripes with the sun angle, or maybe to tropical prints. But whatever the image, a short and punchy line.
***
It is the decoupling from reality that is the making of a fictive, fake, reality. Whether it’s a RINO who signs onto such a hallucination program, or a good old fashioned globo-socialist, doesn’t matter. It is the moral responsibility of anybody who claims freedom as ideal to… just check the damned facts.
Actually, defending the borders is one of the FEW powers that the Constitution gives to Congress. That they refuse to exercise this duty is reason for impeachment and prosecution. Heck, if you want to get down to it, THEY (congress) have actually BROKEN their part of the deal (entering into the UNION) and secession would be legal since they welshed on their deal.
La Raza,
Do you realize how absurd you sound. I am hispanic and totally disagree with all your absurd comments. You live in the best country in the world. Where would you and your comrades be if you had been born in Mexico? Probably begging for money and food. Be grateful that you were born in a country that believes in the individual, liberty, and the rule of law. If you and your comrades were ever to take over we would become a third world country with no incentive to succeed. Grow up and work hard!!!!!!
“Where would you and your comrades be if you had been born in Mexico? ”
LA?
La Raza,
How much you charge to mow my lawn?
Keep mocking us and making fun of us. Keep calling us names. Keep spitting on us…
We’ll be here long after you’re gone. You gringos are rapidly aging and dying out; while we proceed with our Reconquista. The joke is on you. You gringos are truly pathetic.
Viva La Raza!
Troll
the GRINGOS are as good as finished. Their empty strutting peacock, their el Presidente appoints the head of the DHS and is the commander of their armed forces and I now own him. I had to pay him muchos dolares as he is very greedy man and does not seem to think that he can ever have too much money. The Gringos are now tostada quemada. What on Earth were you Gringos thinking when you elected a traidor as your el Presidente? Were you all completely drunk? Way too much Tequila on election day? Oh well, your loss, my gain.
Once we get our amnesty, we will all come to your country. We will all have at least 10 ninos with mucho tax credits from you Gringo smucks and in a generation or two we will overwhelm and deport most of you Gringos! We will start with Arizona after your el Presidente moves federal troops there to arrest their governor and Joe Arpaio and hand the deed over to us and then we will move rapido from there all across the rest of your 57 states to take them over too. Some of you, if you learn Spanish real well, we might let you stay to pick our lettuce or mow our lawns or take care of OUR children in what used to be your houses. Those who don’t learn Spanish will be deported to Alaska. That is until Al Gore’s global warming heats things up and we want Alaska too, then we will deport you all to New Orleans. It will probably all be under water by then anyway.
So give it up and LEARN SPANISH! You should probably all buy Mexican flags too and fly them in your front yard and on your pickup trucks. If you already have an American flag there it is alright if you keep it, as long as you fly it upside down and below our great Mexican flag. Now repeat after me – I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Estados Unidos del Mucho Grande Mexico, and to the Republic for which it use to stand, one nation under me, with everything for us, and nothing anymore for you except to pay mucho mucho mucho more taxes for our tax credits. And remember Gringos, APRENDER EL ESPANOL!!!
good satire
No, Raza, the joke is on you.
Because when Hispanic Americans join the military, when they invest in businesses, when they opt to live and work and seek their destinies “our way” instead of in the manner of the craptocracies they, or their parents or ancestors escaped from, they become America. They join it, they do not displace it.
Summary: Franklin Chang-Diaz*, born in Costa Rica, is one of US, not one of you. And by “you” I mean disturbed racists who think like you; ethnicity is irrelevant.
*Google him.
@LaRaza… gringos, gringos, gringos. LOL! Who talks like that? Where were you born, North Dakota?
What a Racist, petty little troll you are. Please try to remember that the only one impressed with you… is you. Then again, this is the legacy of a tortured intellect in search of a reason to cry… I’m not smart enough to compete, so I must be a victim.
God Bless America!
Just sent this to the Gestapo snitch web site SB1070 (at sign) usdoj (dot) gov
And I think everyone who thinks Fuhrer Obama has gotten out of control should do the same.
Dear sir/madam,
I think my civil rights may have been violated. The pizza I ordered never came. I suspect that the Arizona police arrested the pizza delivery driver on some wild suspicion of his being illegally in the country and ate my pizza. Please send federal marshals to Arizona to check this out and arrest the Arizona police if they look like they may have eaten recently.
“The Dirty Little “Secret”: The reason that politician supporters of Open Borders want it is so that they and/or their campaign contributors can have serf labor. They would probably prefer actual out-and-out slaves but that is illegal. Open Borders Democrats, like Obama, also want it so that those who are now illegal can become legal and vote for them, if they aren’t voting for them already.
Does anyone think that any of these Open Borders politicians actually care one wit otherwise for the illegals. Does anyone think that any of the Open Borders politicians are going to invite these Mexican Indios and Mezclados to join their elite/exclusive golf clubs? Come to live in their gated communities, other than as servants? Invite them to their yachts, other than as low paid deck hands and/or servants? Invite them to their cocktail parties? Introduce them to their daughters?
The big majority of the Mexicans who have come here/will come here are Indios and Mezclados, not the Spanish descendant fair-skinned ruling class of Mexico. This is a form of ethnic cleansing by Mexico’s ruling class. So these Open Borders politicians are aiding and abetting and facilitating ethnic cleansing. If the U.N. were not such a joke, they would all be standing trial for trying to reintroduce a form of latter-day-slavery in the United States and for the mass ethnic cleansing of Mexico.
I complained long and hard after studying the AZ law in its entirety that the law was badly written and very politically designed. Unlike the Oklahoma law which has not been challenged to my knowledge and managed to move over 400,000 illegals from that state, AZ’s law was full of deals and taunts and missteps. It was more a protect the business relations and poke a stick in the eye of the feds.
The one portion that did survive I agreed with, but I do not have the same upbeat assessment that the writer of this article possesses. The police cannot unscrew this goat, no matter how hard they try. And trust me, as a former career detective in Florida (dealing with the Cuban problem), the police aren’t going to try. Nobody wants to be the newest Stacey Koons poster child just to give Brewer a chance to stick Obama with a pin again.
Good luck spinning it. It was a bad law and will give us bad case law.
Re: La Raza, both the person in here and the NGO
As we approach denouement of a half-century of political economy fraud, it is time to take off the gloves and call a spade a spade. Prez Barack Hussein excluded, of course (hell, he’s not even a real Afro-American, he’s a mulato).
Two things:
1) La Raza, the NGO, not the blogger, is disloyal to America, and is thereby seditious. But I’m sure the blogger would fly the same proud treason flag.
2) Hispanic does not exist as a gene pool, the property applied to all other peoples. Why all the mystery, all the complicit sneakiness and lack of pride in who you are? You are a meso-American. Be bold, be proud, raise the flag, hold a parade in the boisterous style of one the homosexuals do every year.
But accept the fact that you are anti-American, and so must be treated as such.
# 13: “Hispanic does not exist as a gene pool…”
True story for you. There I was, in the south Bronx, getting lunch at a small Hispanic bodega. Two New York police officers are also there. One is obviously unfamiliar with Dominican cuisine, and asks his partner about the “Spanish food”. The more veteran partner corrects him: “It’s not Spanish, it’s Hispanic.” Noob cop asks “What’s the difference?”
Whereapon the cook, a short woman from the Dominican Republic, chimes in with heavily accented English: “Eh-Spanish is a-from Eh-Spain. HISpanic is a-from da Bronx.”
Since there is no Federal police force (beyond the investigative FBI) then OF COURSE the only ones available to enforce Federal laws (including immigration ones) are the State police forces!
However, I don’t believe anyone should be “entitled” to keep their “religion” a secret (since “islam” is really only an ancient, ongoing global extortion-racket CRIME-syndicate, it’s still in everyone’s interests, especially those in law enforcement, to be able to ask and know about whom they are dealing with)!
Finally, if “the size of the illegal alien population in Arizona declined by 17 percent, and this seems to have continued ever since (2007,)” then it would really already be over 100% now only five years later, in 2012!
(6 X 17 = 102)! But I don’t think they’ve all gone back home yet, have they!?
For every 1 illegal alien that leaves, 3 more take their place.