Phoenix County Sheriff Begins Round-up of Immigrants

Re: Phoenix County Sheriff Begins Round-up of Immigrants


Despite the title of this thread the "round-up" (if any) is of illegal immigrants. This is a distinction that seems lost on many people.

Do you advocate totally open borders?

If not, then you must concede that there has to be laws that govern entering a country, and for such laws to have any meaning, they must be enforced.

If you do, then you are one of a very small and naive minority and there really is no point debating the issue with you.

If illegal immigrants are to be left alone by the authorities until and unless they break any additional law or laws of this land then there really isn't much point in having laws governing immigration.

If there is a very large number of illegal aliens in this country (and there certainly is), then affirmative action taken by law enforcement authorities to apprehend them and return them to their native lands is hardly unreasonable and most certainly within the scope of their legal charge.

Whether or not such an approach is feasible on a grand scale should not be of concern to local authorities who must deal with local problems, and can't wait for a grand solution to come down from Washington.

If we can agree that people who enter our country without our permission have broken our laws, and it is the job of police to enforce our laws, we are left with a discussion of how they enforce the laws rather than whether or not they may.

Any rational assessment of the illegal immigrant problem in this country must, inevitably, come to the fact that the overwhelming majority of illegal aliens in this country are from Mexico and Central America. There is nothing racist about this conclusion. The proximity of "latino" countries to the US, as well as their depressed economic environments make it assured that they will be the primary source of whatever illegal immigration problem we may have.

If Canada had similar economic conditions, we would probably see a flood of illegal Canadian immigrants, but it does not.

Of course there are very many non-latino nations in the world with poor economic and political conditions such that their people would be incented to come to the US by hook or by crook, but they are separated from us by oceans. Their people cannot simply walk across our borders.

This being the case, if the authorities are to enforce our immigration laws in an assertive rather than passive manner, where should they direct their attention? To "anglo" communities where they might find the odd Serb or Albanian illegal immigrant, or to latino communities wherein latino illegal immigrants would logically choose to reside?

This is detective work at its most simplest and it is nutty to suggest that obvious inclinations should be ignored.

I agree that the authorities should not be requiring proof of citizenship or proper documentation of everyone who simply appears to be latino, but if they have a baseline reason to suspect someone, there's no reason why they should be prohibited from asking that person questions.

What might constitute reasonable suspicion?

The individual cannot speak English. Certainly this does not prove, in and of itself, anything, but the inability to speak English is a much more common characteristic of illegal immigrants than legal immigrants or citizens of latino heritage.

The individual is working as a day laborer, or at a location seeking such work.

The individual is in a beat up old truck with numerous other passengers; driving 15 to 20 mph below the posted speed limit.

The individual becomes noticeably nervous when law enforcement agents are near.

I'm sure there are others which like the above do not constitute indiscriminate and heavy handed police tactics.

In all such cases we should expect our law enforcement agents to question these individuals with an appropriate level of civility and respect, but it is folly to suggest that they must not include characteristics of national origin within their narrowing down process.

This is the same sort of folly that is employed with the airport security operations throughout our country.

If airport security was to conduct elevated checks on each and every passenger, travel would ground to a halt, and so they need to focus their attention on those individuals who present a profile that can be considered to present a greater risk than the vast majority of passengers.

Unfortunately, airport security has been cowered by PC and litigenous pressure and so there is a ridiculously forced randomness to its process of elevated scrutiny.

Case in point: My oldest son at age 22 was flying from NY to Charlotte. Unbeknownst to him his great-grandmother was on the same flight.

My son can be accurately described as swarthy, and, at the time, took to a practice of shaving only every 4 or 5 days. He was hardly dressed as a banker when he came to the airport.

His great-grandmother was, at the time, 96 years of age and about 4' 10" tall. Although Puerto Rican and speaking with a fairly thick accent, there is no way on earth she could have been mistaken for someone of Middle Eastern origins.

While waiting to clear security, they found each other and joined together on the line.

The punch line is probably obvious: My son breezed through security while his great-grandmother was selected for an elevated check - wands, techo-sniff machines etc.

How does this make any sense at all?

Yes, if security had chosen my son for elevated scrutiny they would not have found anything amiss, but at least the effort would have made sense; much more sense that rifling the luggage of a 96 year old Spanish speaking woman with skin as white as her hair.

Admittedly, we need to be cautious that people who fit ethnic and sociological profiles are not harassed simply because they fit such profiles, but such instances are the exception and not the rule, and with limited security resources we have to apply them with greater consideration for intelligence than political correctness.

Finn,

First... using the term "affirmative action" to refer to the process of arresting people based on their race is the funniest piece of bigoted tripe I have ever read.

Second... This sheriff is not going after illegal people. He is going after Hispanic people. He is stopping people who look Hispanic without having any real evidence (other then they look Hispanic) that they have done anything wrong.

Third... what this a--hole is doing is illegal. This kind of makes the argument that he is against "illegals" kind of idiotic, doesn't it.

Some people are making the argument that you can hate illegal people without being a bigot. I haven't seen many examples of this... but I suppose it is theoretically possible.

This guy is a bigot pure and simple.

I'd be interested in seeing what he's actually doing (and not just what got listed in the AP article, heh.)

If we're literally talking about teams sweeping through Latino neighborhoods going "papers please", obviously that's not cool.

At the same time, you don't have to go that far. Just instruct your traffic officers to enforce traffic laws strictly, and if you pull someone over with no insurance or driver's license, place 'em under arrest. Once you've taken them down to the station, you're perfectly within your rights to check their immigration status.

All of those things are specifically within officer discretion, so there's nothing particularly wrong with doing so in this fashion. To the extent that you'll be arresting more Latinos than other races, well, to the extent that a significantly higher percentage of Latinos have no documentation, you're going to run into more no insurance/no driver's license cases with Latinos.

If I may, tightening the belt on (specific) city traffic laws for the express purpose of "checking backgrounds" is questionable. In effect this amounts to re-routing this particular solution- namely, checking papers and weeding out the illegals- from 'going door-to-door and car-to-car' to 'filtering those illegals as they come through you'. Thus the difference rests only on how the decision (to round them up) is carried out.

My face looked like this after I read the article. What a dangerous precedent...

The traffic law trick is an old favorite of bigots. It was used with great success to keep African-Americans out of "white" neighborhoods.

This kind of targeted law-enforcement aimed at a specific minority group doesn't do any good. It hurts communities, breaks families and actually makes real crime worse.

What we need is a productive solution that is compassionate, builds communities and actually makes society better.

On the face of it, at the very least there should be some current study on the rate of immigration (of legals and illegals), the effects of it on the US economy after GW's era, and any effects should be researched and reported to Congress. But not to have immigrants rounded-up (and perhaps roughed-up) in this way. The spirit of the Americans has shown otherwise.

Excellent, I hope more local Sheriff do the same.

Whose going to slaughter your meat? Whose is going to pick your lettuce? Cutting cabbage all day in the hot sun is one of the hardest jobs there is. How much more are you willing to pay for food so farmers can attract people to do these crappy jobs. Ever spend a full day picking strawberries or peppers? I bet you'd be begging for a job in WalMart by noon.

Those who have read my posts will know that I am a stickler for the the Constitution including the Bill of Rights, but here is the thing: These safeguards protect US CITZENS, not those who are with-in our borders illegally. I say the following as a dedicated socialist, if you are here illegally and by whatever means you are found, your ass should be sent back from where ever you came.

The corporate class has a huge problem with this, they want illegal cheap labor that they can exploit....screw them. They can pay a decent wage, we can continue to let many legally immigrate who will be willing to take low skilled hard work jobs so that they can start their journey in America.

I not advocating illegal immigration. I just know that Americans want their food cheap and farmers have a heck of time finding anyone else to do the work, even if they pay more. I think it's hypocrisy for anyone to buy Perdue chicken, Jimmy Dean pork or anything from ConAgra and then call for the removal of illegal immigrants. Every time you buy from corporate farmers, supermarkets or restaurants you are supporting the use of illegal aliens. Don't want to donate money to this cause? Stay out of MickeyD's and any other big brand name you can think of. Go to a local "pick your own", visit the closest farmer's market, join a CSA or raise the food yourself.

I would rather not have any illegal aliens available to be exploited.

Oh please waterman, do you see anyone else doing the dirty jobs?
I think not!!

Border security is assigned to Immigration officers, not trigger happy,
bigot Sheriffs. This Sheriff badge does not give him the right to
overstep his boundaries and start vigilante actions against people whom
he thinks should be deported.

This man should be stripped of his badge and face legal action.

Humans are humans, regardless if they're legal or illegal.

Don't flatter yourself.

Your posts have shown no respect for the Bill of Rights and little respect for the Constitution.

They have shown a large amount of arrogance and self-righteousness.

Illegal = Prohibited by law.

Regardless of what you think, people that break the law = Criminals.




Maybe Americans should get up off their fat lazy asses and do the jobs that need to be done.

That sheriff is a hero - we need more like him.

I call him Commander in Chief.

What you advocate is nearly impossible to do, our economy is infested with products produced by poverty wage workers. Hypocrisy would be to call for the the removal of illegals or making them unemployable and then complaining about the jump in prices for certain products which are currently subsidized by exploited illegal workers.

There are two separate issues here.

First (the primary issue raised by the thread) are the rights of the people of Hispanic descent who are targeted by these sweeps.. many of whom are US citizens. Without question, the rights of American citizens are being violated as they are searched without probable caused, denied equal protection and are presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Even Hawkeye, who says he supports the Bill of Rights will understand how this is a violation of the 4th, 5th (and 14th) amendments.

There are many cases where American citizens have spent time in jail for immigration charges, and a several US citizens have been deported.

Innocent until proven guilty is a concept that doesn't seem to apply if you are a Hispanic American citizen.

The second issue is whether people who have broken the law are still human beings. I agree with those who say yes... American can and should have compassion and understanding-- especially since Americans have a long history of breaking all sorts of laws, and yet we have still done pretty well.

But the issue of law-enforcement breaking the law is the major issue here. The illegal actions of this sheriff are indefensible.

Citizens are innocent until proven guilty, are protected from certain types of searches and seizures, however being commanded to document your citizenship status is not so far as I am aware a violation of the constitution. we have for decades considered having a national identity card that must be produced when called for by the state, and while we have not done so yet I have never heard claim that such a program is a violation of the constitution.