Law Enforcement Opposition to SB 1070

Interesting, well-articulated article from Alternet...

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Why Law Enforcement Officials Should Hate Arizona's Racist New Law

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on April 30, 2010, Printed on April 30, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146677/

William John Cox has worked as a prosecutor, a public defender, and decades ago, a police officer in El Cajon, California, not far from the Mexico border.

"Sometimes, in the early morning we would see illegal immigrants trudging north carrying their few belongings in the knit shopping bags known as 'Tijuana briefcases,'" he recalled in a posting on Facebook, following the signing of Arizona's draconian immigration law. "We would stop them, ask for the papers, and arrest them if they had none. When the border patrol officers picked them up at the station, they would leave a box of practice ammunition as a reward for each one arrested."

Those were the '60s. A few years later, in the early 1970s, Cox was tasked with authoring the Los Angeles Police Department's new policy manual. He and his colleagues weighed whether this sort of collaboration between police and immigration officials made sense. The answer, they determined, was no: such practices would undermine law enforcement by creating a chilling effect in the very communities police rely on to solve crimes. This logic would be codified in 1979 by the L.A. City Council and then-Police Chief Daryl Gates, who implemented Special Order 40, a mandate that forbids "initiat(ing) police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person." Despite attempts by right-wing groups to challenge the order, it has been upheld in court ever since.

In Los Angeles, Cox told AlterNet in a phone interview, "they decided that if you have police officers who are enforcing immigration laws, then what happens is that you cut off that voluntary flow of information that is essential for law enforcement in a free society."

"Say a woman has been raped," he explains. "Is she going to come forward and say, 'Yes, I've been raped,' if she will then get deported for reporting her victimization?" Fear of deportation would not only mean her rapist could get away with his crime, but would be free to go on and victimize someone else. "There is a value to society in having her come forward," Cox says.

Dr. Richard Weinblatt, a former police chief and deputy sheriff who once worked on the border in New Mexico, agrees. Like Cox, he is adamantly opposed to Arizona's new law, for numerous reasons, not the least of which is that it will prove to be counterproductive for police. "[As] somebody who's had his boots in the dirt doing border policing as a local deputy sheriff," he tells me, "you spend so much time trying to get the most vulnerable of our society, particularly women and children who are in pretty brutal domestic violence situations, to trust you -- and you can barely get them to do that. And now with this -- forget it. You've got almost no chance. It disenfranchises them even more."

Signed into law on April 23, Arizona Senate Bill 1070 mandates that local police demand verification of a person's legal immigration status "where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States."

If the person is unable to verify that he or she is in the country legally, "a law enforcement officer, without a warrant, may arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States."

According to Weinblatt, this forces the hand of law enforcement in situations where action may not be called for. "This law says that if the officer or deputy sheriff on the local level -- a non-immigration, non-border patrol person -- feels that they have developed 'reasonable suspicion' that a person is an illegal alien, they are mandated -- they must, there is no discretion here -- they are mandated to investigate."

"For most officers in the field, reasonable suspicion is a very gray area," Weinblatt says. In the jump to reasonable suspicion, "police are going to have to be able to articulate certain facts that made them go further. Well, what kinds of facts would make them go further? You can guess it yourself: If the person is darker than me, if a person has more of an accent than me. Well, what is that? That's racial profiling."

Cox agrees that racial profiling -- "behavior that we do not want to encourage" -- will be an inevitable result of the law. "Once you start down that slope of saying it's now okay to stop every Hispanic-looking person and asking for their papers," he says, "then you're just asking for a police state."

This is no exaggeration. In a state where racial profiling is already rampant, the coercive language of the new law "effectively compels Arizona police to make immigration enforcement their top priority," argues National Lawyers Guild president Marjorie Cohn, who wrote an article this week laying out the legal case against the law. "Indeed," she writes, "several law enforcement groups oppose SB 1070."

The Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative, an organization of police officials who favor federal immigration reform, condemned the law, saying it would probably result in racial profiling and threaten public safety because undocumented people would hesitate to come forward and report crimes or cooperate with police for fear of being deported. The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police also criticized the legislation, saying it will "negatively affect the ability of law enforcement agencies across the state to fulfill their many responsibilities in a timely manner"; the group believes the immigration issue is best addressed at the federal level.

Lawsuits and Frivolous Lawsuits

Less than a week after the law was signed, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Arizona and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), announced a plan to launch a legal challenge to SB 1070. In a press conference on the lawn of Arizona's House of Representatives -- featuring civil rights leaders Dolores Huerta and Richard Chavez, as well as singer Linda Ronstadt -- local advocates spoke out against the law, citing its numerous constitutional transgressions. Central among them: the law violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which gives the federal government sole authority to regulate U.S. borders. It also violates the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause, which states that "no state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

"The Arizona community can be assured that a vigorous and sophisticated legal challenge will be mounted, in advance of SB1070's implementation, seeking to prevent this unconstitutional and discriminatory law from ever taking effect," MALDEF president and general counsel Thomas A. Saenz said. The law takes effect 90 days after its signing.

For the state of Arizona, combating these lawsuits will prove to be costly, swallowing resources that could be allocated to any number of other projects, including effective law enforcement initiatives that do not rely on racial profiling. Even more absurd, Weinblatt points out, is "the way the law is set up, regular citizens can sue local law enforcement agencies if they feel that they are not doing an adequate job in enforcing this." Indeed, a provision within the law states: "a person may bring an action in Superior Court to challenge any official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state that adopts or implements a policy that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law."

As Marjorie Cohn writes, this means that "even if a municipality is innocent, it will still be forced to rack up exorbitant legal fees to defend itself against frivolous lawsuits."

Then there's the "flip side," according to Weinblatt: "People who are stopped and asked to prove their legitimacy, if you will -- they can sue. So now you have a situation where fiscally strapped government agencies are going to be sued whether they do it, and sued whether they don't do it."

For Weinblatt, who is based in Ohio, this is especially alarming given that politicians in his state have already vowed to pursue similar legislation. This week, Republican State Representative Courtney Combs, along with Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones, sent a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland, urging him "to employ your leadership role as Governor to assure legislation is passed that will mirror that of the illegal immigration legislation" in Arizona.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the letter was sent "on the same day Jones was getting ready to lay off 10 more corrections officers, deputies and members of his staff. The layoffs, the second round this year, were prompted by budget cuts in the sheriff's office in the last two years, bringing the number of eliminated jobs to about 50 positions since 2009."

"In Ohio, we've had departments shut down, we've had officers laid off. Ohio has had a long history of fiscal problems," says Weinblatt. "They've got stretched resources to begin with -- and now you want to saddle them with another duty? And if they do it or they don't do it, they're likely to have to defend themselves in a lawsuit?"

Getting police officers involved in immigration work is not like training for traffic stops, says Weinblatt. "There are so many different nuances to immigration law, so many different types of status, classifications of people, different types of visas." In order to do it right, police officers would have to be trained, at considerable cost, in all of these nuances. Such training, he argues, would take place off-site, and departments would have to hire temporary replacements to fill the gap. "From a police chief's perspective, it's a logistical nightmare."

When it comes to local police and immigration enforcement, argues Weinblatt, "they should not be involved at all. And if they want to get involved, they should have discretion."

Must Police Officers Enforce All Laws?

In 1971, President Richard Nixon established a National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. William John Cox wrote the opening chapters of the Police Task Force report for the the commission. At the time, he says, the major discussion that took place posed the question: "Must police officers enforce all laws? Or can police administrators establish policies in which they decide how they are going to allocate their resources?" For example, should police be cracking down on such relatively minor crimes as "corner vendors without permits, or low level narcotics offenses -- or immigration"? The priority, most rational people would conclude, should be more serious or violent crimes.

Ultimately, the new law in Arizona is not about crime at all -- although politicians would like their constituents to believe it is. (The claim that "half of the murders in Phoenix are committed by illegal aliens" is completely spurious, argues Weinblatt. "When they do the crime statistics, they don't report it by illegal alien versus legal alien. So that's a problem right there.") Instead, the new law is tapping into anger and angst over high levels of crime in border states, over devastating economic conditions and rampant unemployment.

"I think this is more related to hard times," says Cox. For an equivalent moment in U.S. history, he says, "you have to go back almost to the Chinese exclusion laws in California at the turn of the century."

"So many Chinese workers came into California and the Western United States to build railroads and so forth -- but then they began to establish themselves into the cities such as San Francisco." When hard economic times presented themselves, "people started saying, 'Wait a minute we have to do something about them.' So in San Francisco, for example, they passed a law that said that in order to operate a laundromat, it had to be in a brick building." (At the time, most Chinese laundromats were not in brick buildings; it was a blatantly discriminatory law.)

Cox cites vigilante groups like the (now-defunct) Minutemen as helping set the stage for Arizona's new law -- "In a way what we're seeing is an extension of that" -- but it is as much about economic distress. "What we're experiencing right now is really high true unemployment … People are getting really antsy they are getting scared -- and it's really easy to turn on immigrants."

Weinblatt agrees that "politicians are tapping into a vein of public sentiment, particularly in the Southwest."

"I'm not saying that the folks in Arizona don't have a legitimate beef with the federal government and with the system the way it's working," he says. "I'm not saying that they don't have real concerns."

"The biggest crime of all this," says Weinblatt, "is that the folks that are suffering and are the saddest of victims, they become victimized even further. Because now where do they turn? They can't even turn to the police now can they?"

As a police officer in New Mexico, "I used to go to eight to ten domestics a night," he says. (A "domestic" is police slang for domestic violence.) "Now the people who can come to the house to save them are also the enemies. To me that's horrible. That absolutely goes against everything that we in local policing are supposed to stand for."

In fact, the situation he confronted with domestic violence calls serves as a useful analogy for the new law, he says. "It's like, I'm going to walk into a domestic and I'm going to try to solve in 20 minutes what took maybe 20 years to develop. This is a simplistic, knee-jerk reaction. You can't expect local law enforcement officers to try to go in there with a Dirty Harry kind of approach of crime control and try to solve a problem on a simple level. This is a complex political problem, it needs a political solution that comes out of Washington DC."

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and editor of Rights & Liberties and World Special Coverage. Follow her on Twitter.

© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/146677/

SB 1070: Still A Bad Law.

Patchwork changes to immigration law came in waning hours of session

By Evan Wyloge - evan.wyloge@azcapitoltimes.com

Published: April 27, 2010 at 7:24 pm

Arizona Capitol Times

One week after Gov. Jan Brewer gave Arizona the toughest immigration law in the U.S., state lawmakers added changes that would limit the scope of the law and protect local governments from lawsuits.

The changes were sought by lawmakers who voted for Arizona’s new immigration law after striking a deal with immigration hawk Sen. Russell Pearce.

Rep. Russ Jones, who was one of three Republican lawmakers to vote against a similar bill in 2009, said he agreed to vote for S1070 this year in exchange for Pearce’s promise to make changes to it in follow-up legislation.

The resulting bill, H2162, was approved on April 29, just hours before the end of the session.

H2162 prescribes a few key changes to the new immigration law, clarifying both the definition of lawful contact and guidelines for municipalities, as well as lowering the minimum — not the maximum — fine that can be assessed to cities that have so-called “sanctuary city” policies. It also restructured some of the punitive actions that a court would apply to those charged under the new law.

Representatives of the law enforcement community say the changes significantly alter the way police would have to enforce the law and the way they would be accountable for doing so.

Lyle Mann, who runs the day-to-day operations of the Arizona Peace Officers Safety and Training Board (AZPOST), said the fine points of the trailer bill are vital to the street-level execution of the new law. His group, incidentally, has been tasked by the governor with turning the provisions of the new law into a specific and manageable training rubric for police agencies across the state.

One of the changes to S1070 removes the word “solely” from the description of the new law’s lawful contact, when it comes to race. So, now race, color or ethnicity simply cannot be used as part of reasonable suspicion.

Mann said this is a huge simplification for his organization’s task, and should settle at least some of the fear over racial profiling. Now, his organization will simply be able to tell police agencies to have their officers understand that race is not a reason to initiate contact.

“It should quell the fears that a lot of people have vocalized,” Mann said. “This will make the training and policymaking much clearer and simpler.”

H2162 also narrows what is banned at the county, city and municipality level, changing it from a “policy or practice” to just a “policy” preventing police officers from using the new immigration law to its fullest extent.

With the independence that police officers rely on, Mann said, management of their activities is nearly impossible. So their “practices” are made at the officers’ discretion. The officers are trained, though, to rely on the “policies” their agency set.

“A ‘policy’ is the written instruction that tells officers how a task is to get done. ‘Practice’ is the actual activity carried out in support of that policy,” Mann said. “So the city of Phoenix might have 3,000 officers on the street. It’s much more difficult to control how those officers carry out their practices.”

Removing the words “or practices” from the new law goes a long way in protecting police agencies from lawsuits and fines, Mann said, because AZPOST will give guidelines, cities will turn those guidelines into “policy,” and the cities then would not be at the mercy of litigation coming from any resident who feels like the police agency isn’t enforcing the law to the fullest extent.

In addition, Jones said Pearce agreed to lower the fines assessed to local governments that violate the law. In S1070, a local government or agency initially could have been fined between $1,000 and $5,000 per day if an Arizona resident filed suit against them in Superior Court.

Jones wanted the fines cut in half, because he thought those numbers were arbitrary. Pearce only met him part of the way.

Instead of lowering both the maximum and minimum per-day fines, Pearce kept the $5,000 maximum and changed language in H2162 that would lower the minimum fines to $500 per day from $1,000 per day.

“Pearce says he thinks it’s important to have a sanction,” Mann said. “So you have to say, ‘OK, what’s a reasonable sanction? Do you get a better outcome with a bigger sanction?’ And you have to remember, if the city of Phoenix gets fined $1 million, they can’t open parks, they can’t operate their libraries, they take that money from schools. (Jones) is saying you can get the same compliance with half those numbers.”

Nancy Jo Merritt, who has 32 years of experience as an immigration attorney, said she understands why Jones and the law enforcement agencies would be so concerned over these small changes.

“This law is going to be so hard to comply with, so why make the punishments so harsh?” she said. “It’s like the assumption is the only way to get cities to follow this law is by threatening them with the death sentence.”

The last change outlined in H2162 concerned a phrase that said lawful contact can include an officer’s use of the new immigration law “in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state.”

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Phoenix, harped on this new phrase, saying it will mean that law officers will be able and compelled to check the status of a person, even if the police officer were responding to some sort of civil town ordinance, like an overgrown lawn, a fence in disrepair or a barking dog.

Sinema said police officers could previously only use the new immigration law when they encountered someone during the enforcement of a criminal or civil traffic violation, and that this will expand the way police officers could contact, then detain people while checking their federal immigration status.

Pearce denied that this change means much, and said police would already have been able to use the new law when making contact with a person for such civil ordinances. He said this new language was only added to further clarify the way police are authorized to use the new immigration law.

Mann of AZPOST agreed with Pearce, saying police officers would have the ability to use the new immigration law during any type of contact with any person, regardless of this new language.

“Police officers do this every day. It’s called a ‘Terry Stop,’ after the Terry v. Ohio case,” Mann said. “Let’s say there are some guys playing basketball in a park. The officer walks up and says, ‘Hey guys. How’s it going?’ That’s lawful contact. It’s a standard voluntary stop.”

Pearce said the changes in H2162 were something he agreed to, in order to get the votes he needed, and that he thinks he lived up to his bargain.

“I wasn’t excited about it, but we did it,” Pearce said. “(Jones) ought to be happy with the changes, I kept my word.”

The Legal Battle over SB 1070 Begins.

-----------From the ColorLines Magazine Blog, Racewire, today-------------

The Lawsuits Are Here: ACLU, MALDEF, NILC Challenge Arizona

Julianne Hing

Immigrant and civil rights groups are set to announce in Phoenix today that they are ready to take on SB 1070, Arizona’s new law that demands that law enforcement officers pull over and question anyone they believe may be in the country without papers. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and its Arizona state chapter will challenge the law’s constitutionality on the grounds that the bill sanctions racial profiling.

This collection of groups is the same that fought California’s Prop 187. And both MALDEF and the ACLU have been involved in court battles to overturn local ordinances in Farmers Branch, Texas and Hazleton, Pennsylvania, that tried to bar undocumented immigrants from renting property in the town. Thomas Saenz, the president of MALDEF, Alessandra Soler Meetze, the executive director of ACLU-Arizona, Dolores Huerta, famed labor and immigrant rights’ leader, and the singer Linda Ronstadt are expected to speak.

Governor Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 into law on Friday, defended her decision then by issuing an Executive Order that demanded appropriate training for law enforcement officers so they could enforce the law without resorting to racial profiling.

“Racial profiling is illegal,” Brewer said on Friday. “It is illegal in America, and it’s certainly illegal in Arizona.” When pressed though, she couldn’t provide specific criteria that police should rely on.

Elsewhere in Phoenix, the 24-hour vigils outside the state Capitol building are now in their eleventh day. And international pop star Shakira is rumored to be meeting with Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon to lend her support to the town in its efforts to fight SB 1070.

[update 2:44pm EST] This morning, two other lawsuits were filed against SB 1070. The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix charging that the state bill violates federal law by trying to enforce immigration laws on its own.

And The Arizona Republic reported Tucson police officer Marin Escobar filed a lawsuit this morning charging that SB 1070 forces law enforcement officers to rely on racial profiling to comply the law. Escobar challenged SB 1070, saying that there is no such thing as racially neutral criteria when it comes to visually determining a person’s immigration status.

Isabel Garcia: SB 1070 an assault on Latino Communities

Legal Defender Isabel Garcia: Arizona Bill Forcing Officers to Determine Immigration Status Marks “All-Out Assault” on Latino Communities

Arizona lawmakers have approved what’s being described as the harshest anti-immigrant measure in the country, forcing police officers to determine the immigration status of someone they suspect of being an undocumented immigrant. Meanwhile, over fifty people were arrested Thursday in a federal immigration sweep targeting van operators allegedly involved in smuggling in undocumented migrants from Mexico. We speak to Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Tuscon-based Coalition for Human Rights and legal defender of Pima County, Arizona. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Coalición de Derechos Humanos, or the Coalition for Human Rights, a Tucson-based organization. She is also the legal defender of Pima County, Arizona and won the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award in 2008 and the 2006 National Human Rights Award from Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights.

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Rush Transcript

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JUAN GONZALEZ: In Arizona, state lawmakers have approved what’s being described as the harshest anti-immigrant measure in the country. On Tuesday, the Arizona House of Representatives voted to force police officers to determine the immigration status of someone they suspect of being an undocumented immigrant. The state Senate passed a similar measure earlier this year, and Republican Governor Jan Brewer is expected to sign it into law.


Introduced by State Senator Russell Pearce, the bill would give an unprecedented amount of immigration enforcement power to local police officers. Immigrant rights and civil liberties groups in the state have vowed to challenge the new bill, warning that it will only increase racial profiling.


AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, federal law enforcement agencies mounted a massive operation across Arizona Thursday targeting van operators allegedly involved in smuggling undocumented migrants from Mexico. Nearly fifty people were arrested, and more than 800 federal agents were involved in the bust, that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is touting as its largest-ever human smuggling case.


For more on what’s happening in Arizona, we’re joined here in New York by Isabel Garcia, the co-chair of the Coalition of Human Rights, a Tucson-based organization. She’s also the legal defender of Pima County, Arizona, and won the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award in 2008 and the 2006 National Human Rights Award from Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights.

Welcome to Democracy Now!


ISABEL GARCIA: Thank you very much.


AMY GOODMAN: Let’s start with the legislation. Can you explain what legislators have just passed?


ISABEL GARCIA: Yes. This legislature is probably the most extreme legislature in this country. This particular bill is intended to clean up everything they’ve not been able to do in the past few years, obligating police officers to determine immigration status, really giving racial profiling, of course, its largest boost, converting it to its most important law enforcement technique.


This law would also create a new crime in the state. If you’re undocumented in the state, you would be guilty of a trespass. People would have a private right of action, if police and other agencies didn’t determine immigration status. Immigration status would have to be shared by all agencies. It criminalizes day workers, day labor workers, whether you’re trying to hire somebody or whether they’re trying to be hired.


And so, of course, it represents for us an all-out assault on our communities, guaranteeing that Arizona, in fact, is the engine for all of the anti-immigrant legislation and politicians in this country, with apparently eleven states poised to follow suit, if in fact Governor Brewer signs this bill.


JUAN GONZALEZ: When you say criminalizing even day laborers, I was struck by—one part of the law would prohibit people from blocking traffic when they seek or offer day labor on the streets. So this would be—allow a license, basically, for the police to really target day laborers across the state.


ISABEL GARCIA: Absolutely. For instance, in New York City here, you wave a cab, and when they pull over, of course, it blocks traffic for a few seconds. That’s exactly what would be criminalized in all of the state of Arizona, guaranteeing, of course, that day laborers could not be out looking for work. We’ve criminalized work in the state of Arizona.


AMY GOODMAN: Who is the engine for this?


ISABEL GARCIA: Well, Russell Pearce is the author, but ultimately—


AMY GOODMAN: He is a state legislator.


ISABEL GARCIA: Yes, he’s a senator in the state legislature. But ultimately, it really is our federal policy. Beginning in 1994, Arizona was pretty much selected to be the place to funnel all immigrants, to create chaos, division, eventually leading to the election of anti-immigrant politicians, from, as you know, the Sheriff Arpaio there, Andrew Thomas, who just recently resigned to run for attorney general. And Arpaio states he’s going to run for governor, too. The superintendent of schools is an anti-immigrant. And, of course, Russell Pearce is joined by an entire gang of extremists in the legislature. So I really put the onus and blame on the federal government, in addition to the state government, for funneling and purposely creating Arizona as the laboratory for all of these anti-immigrant measures.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, those who defend these measures say that Arizona has become the main transit point along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico for undocumented migrants coming over.

ISABEL GARCIA: Absolutely.


JUAN GONZALEZ: What is the situation in southern Arizona in terms of migrants? And is there any—


ISABEL GARCIA: Yes.


JUAN GONZALEZ: —legitimacy to the concerns of folks that Arizona has become like the main doorway now to illegal immigration to the country?


ISABEL GARCIA: Yes, Arizona is, in fact, the doorway. Over 50 percent of all crossings occur through Arizona. Again, it was purposeful.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And why is that?


ISABEL GARCIA: It was purposeful. Beginning in 1994, we began with this prevention through deterrence, but really with military-type operations—Operation Gatekeeper in California; Operation Blockade, and then became Hold the Line, in the El Paso area; Rio Grande in the rest of Texas; and unfortunately, in Arizona, Operation Safeguard, that has resulted of course in the deaths of thousands of immigrants along the border.


So, yes, they’re correct that Arizona has become the gateway. New York Times reported that that area, in fact, was the bottleneck for all of America, North America. But that was purposeful, in fact intended. We believe so, because not only is a very conservative state, but the border is owned basically by the federal government, the state government and the Tohono O’odham Nation, which, for the most part, we ignore as much as we can.


And so, as a result, we have created Arizona to be the place where traffickers come, smugglers come. We have made smuggling an incredibly profitable business. Prior to 1994, people did not require the use of a smuggler. Now most people need a smuggler. But instead of catching smugglers—imagine, 800 agents to—ICE agents descending on Arizona with ski masks and armor like you can’t believe and vehicles and helicopters to arrest forty to fifty people?

It’s really absurd justification, when we know that it’s an all-out assault on the public and the community, right at the heels of this legislation passing, and this operation coming forward, when really we’re not interested in the smugglers in Maricopa County. They have convicted hundreds and hundreds of people who have simply crossed and admitted that they were going to pay a smuggler. They’re the ones that are being prosecuted as being smugglers, as co-conspirators to their own smuggling.


And unfortunately, the courts have not been of much help. They have upheld almost every single piece of legislation that we believe is unconstitutional, illegal, a federal grab. And yet, they’ve been okayed by the courts.


AMY GOODMAN: Isabel Garcia, how does the new legislation compare to the 287(g) agreements?


ISABEL GARCIA: Well, 287(g), as you know, is a federal program that has two models. One is the field model that Joe Arpaio became the poster child for. And then the jail model. In spite of his massive violations and, you know, having—


AMY GOODMAN: And for people, just very quickly, who don’t know who Sheriff Arpaio is?


ISABEL GARCIA: He’s the sheriff in Maricopa County who has made it his mission to be the most visible anti-immigrant in the country. He’s authored a book and made profits, and of course has become the poster child for all of them. He was the person who instituted 287(g) with a vengeance, even though he violated so many rights. He was only limited not to do the federal—I mean, the field model, and that permits—that permitted those agents to, in fact, determine citizenship and residency. He states, “I don’t care if I’ve been stripped of 287(g) field model, I have Arizona laws”—that, by the way, were signed by our now-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano—“I have those state laws to enforce, and so I don’t care if I have a 287(g) or not.” So it’s a 287(g) institutionalized on the state.


AMY GOODMAN: We have a clip of Glenn Beck interviewing Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: Local law enforcement comes across some people that have a erratic or scared or whatever—you know. GLENN BECK: Demeanor? SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: They’re worried. And if they have their speech, what they look like, if they just look like they came from another country, we can take care of that situation. But I don’t need that anyway, Glenn. GLENN BECK: Wait, wait, wait. Are you telling—hang on, hang on, hang on. SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: I can still do the job. GLENN BECK: When was that—when was that law written? Because all I hear about is, that sounds like profiling. And the government is saying you can’t profile anybody. SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO: Well, that law, in 1996, part of the comprehensive law that was passed, it’s in there. It’s in there.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Isabel Garcia?


ISABEL GARCIA: Yes, that’s Joe Arpaio. And as other clips that people have seen him on the television, he has stated upfront he does not care what the federal government tells him. He is going to enforce the laws in Arizona, even though it is driving the economy downward. The situation for our communities, of course, is really acute. People yesterday were scrambling, didn’t send people to school, didn’t go to work. And, of course, the south side, where my mother still lives, was under full-out assault.


JUAN GONZALEZ: That’s the south side of Tucson.


ISABEL GARCIA: Absolutely. Under the guise of going after a few shuttle companies, come on. Eight hundred ICE agents, together with US marshals, local police officers, stopped traffic in that part of town.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, there was an expectation by many supporters of Barack Obama that once he got into office, these massive type raids would stop and that there would be some effort at some kind of comprehensive immigration reform. There’s been some now increased talk about it in recent weeks. What is your—what is your assessment of the first year of Obama administration and your hopes for some kind of change in immigration policy in the future?


ISABEL GARCIA: Well, unfortunately, under the Obama administration, we’ve seen more deportations than under any other administration. Not that he’s more anti-immigrant, but Democrat administrations, as well as Republican administrations, have continued to build the enforcement buildup, and therefore it’s not a surprise to us that there’s more and more deportations.


Unfortunately, this administration is responsible for yesterday’s assault on our community. This administration continues to follow the flawed concept that migration is somehow a law enforcement or national security issue. And it is not. It is a economic, social, political phenomenon. And until we begin to address root cause and—for instance, what NAFTA has done to the agriculture in Mexico, displacing millions of workers, flooding of course to the United States. They knew they would flood in here. That’s why they began to build walls in 1994. They didn’t build the walls, as some people would believe, on September the 12th of 2001. We began building those walls in 1994. So we’re very disappointed with this administration.


AMY GOODMAN: Isabel Garcia, I wanted to ask you about the money that Arizona has to do this. I mean, you have, last month, Arizona becoming the first state to eliminate SCHIP, right, the Children’s Health Insurance Program—


ISABEL GARCIA: Absolutely.


AMY GOODMAN: —leaving tens of thousands of kids without coverage. The Arizona governor signed a new budget canceling the program, which also—which covered 47,000 low-income kids. The move coincided with cuts to Medicaid coverage for childless adults, dropping an additional 310,000 people from the rolls. So where is the money coming from?


ISABEL GARCIA: Absolutely. We are seeing a downward dive in our economy, precisely because we are so anti-immigrant, in addition to, of course, the economic woes of this country. Not only what you’ve stated, but we have eliminated the full-day kindergarten. We’re at the bottom of the list in terms of the states for funding for education. We have eliminated, wholesale, all funding for GED adult education. And the cuts go on and on. At the same time, they’re attempting to give tax cuts, of course, to corporations and businesses. And so, we are on a real downward spiral.


And of course they pluck out the immigrant, as they have historically, to blame all the societal ills, in spite of the fact that there’s recently been very credible studies to show that the undocumented labor force represent almost a billion dollars in terms of a net gain, when you subtract all of the costs that are associated with undocumented immigrants. You know very well we don’t have 12 million people here on welfare or—because we’re benevolent. We have 12 million undocumented people here because our economy depends on it, and the state economies depend on them.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And Janet Napolitano obviously, the head of Homeland Security, is your former governor.


ISABEL GARCIA: Absolutely.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Did you have any expectation that she would be—take on these kind of policies when she was governor?


ISABEL GARCIA: We knew she became the Department of Homeland Security Secretary precisely because of her war on immigrants. She, too, is quite responsible for the buildup in Arizona. She signed, as she stated, the toughest employer sanction laws, that now have been copied by Mississippi and other states. She signed a bill making workers criminals, agreeing to sign the bill that says if you use a fictitious Social Security number—of course, contributing to the Social Security suspense fund, over $200 billion worth—that you are guilty of being an aggravated identity thief. So she called the National Guard on the borders. So we did not expect anything good when Obama, President Obama, appointed Janet Napolitano to this position.


AMY GOODMAN: A few years ago, May Day was huge for immigrants’ rights marchers around the country. What are your plans for this May Day? And what are your demands right now?


ISABEL GARCIA: We are planning, of course, massive May Day mobilizations across the country. Ours in Tucson, of course, will be very clear. Our demands will be that we, number one, not demand just immigration reform. We want details. We are not in agreement with the four pillars, as spelled out by Senators Schumer and Graham, that continue that flawed analysis as immigrants committing a crime. We have to get off of that and recognize it. So we’re demanding that the enforcement stop, that we stop resourcing the billion-dollar structure that is going along the border, a militarization, of course, that is creeping up into the United States. I mean, Julie Myers, in 2006, at the Swift plants, announced what we’ve been saying all along: remember, this is signaling that enforcement will not remain at the border; it will go interior. And it has. So that’s our first demand.


Our second demand is that we immediately address the root cause, that if we’re interested about migration and the suffering of people coming into this country—the eighty-six people that we have already found in the state of Arizona at the border as of three or four weeks ago—we want a stop to that. And we need also a reform that reflects the reality. We should legalize the 12 million people here and begin to address those issues along the border that have caused so much suffering, environmental degradation and devastation by the Border Patrol and ICE and other agencies.

And so, our demands are huge. And we know that we’re going against even the prominent immigrant rights groups that are following the framework that is being spelled out by the Senators Schumer and Graham.


JUAN GONZALEZ: One final question, the immigrant rights movement that had such a huge outpouring in 2006, subsequently fractured between what I would call the more grassroots organizations, that supplied the people power, and the national groups, the trade unions, the Catholic Church and some of the major Washington immigration groups, that urged a more realistic compromise approach to legislation, what’s your—how is the movement faring these days in terms of the tension between these two wings of the movement?


ISABEL GARCIA: Well, unfortunately, the brokers, that you’ve stated very clearly here for us, have really attempted to co-opt the grassroots movements. As you saw, maybe 200,000, 500,000 people marched on Washington, DC, and of course the brokers and those that handled the march and handled the message, I hate to say, used the people that marched onto DC.


I think that there’s a great opportunity for the grassroots immigrant rights people to actually come forward now, because people are questioning: what do you mean I should just call and ask for comprehensive immigration reform? What does that mean? We will not accept any reform. And we can see that the millions and millions of dollars that have been spent by these organizations promoting a campaign-type, rather than a movement-building, you know, phenomenon—they should have spent some of that money educating the American public about the realities of immigration, the immigration situation, immigration laws and immigration history in this country. We have to begin to know the truth. And a lot of immigrant rights groups are, in fact, challenging those brokers and those messages as we speak today.



AMY GOODMAN: I think it is very important to point out that weekend, it was the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq weekend, the march on Washington, 200,000 to 500,000 immigrant rights protesters, the comparison of the size of that to the Tea Party rally that also took place, and then you compare the coverage—


ISABEL GARCIA: Absolutely.


AMY GOODMAN: —of the couple thousand people at the Tea Party rally versus the 200,000 to 500,000 people who rallied for immigrants’ rights. I think most people in this country did not realize that was going on.


ISABEL GARCIA: Absolutely.


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! Isabel Garcia, thanks so much for being with us.


ISABEL GARCIA: Thank you.


AMY GOODMAN: Co-chair of Coalición de Derechos Humanos, Coalition for Human Rights, which is based in Tucson, Arizona. We’re glad to have you here in New York for a few minutes.


ISABEL GARCIA: Thank you so much.

SB 1070; Community Sovereignty; Chomsky on Fascism.

I will have more on yesterday's Capitol protest later; this seemed relevant, though. Chomsky describes the Tea Party contingent well. They were there yesterday - indistinguishable from JD supporters, hundreds of ranchers, and rabid anti-immigrant forces. Hundreds of them, all told. And maybe 25 of us, mostly youth of color. Our opposition has no foundation for their claims, so they just called us names ("losers", "idiots") and told us to "go back to Mexico" (I'm a direct descendant of the first Pilgrim Governor, actually, and carry Brigham Young's genes in my blood). 

Actually, I'm surprised I wasn't assaulted by one of the anti-immigrant  people, because they were so agitated that a few of the women chased after me screaming when I went by them with DREAM Act fliers ("how about the 'Go Home Act'?"). Terrified people are easily exploited by men like Pearce and Thomas, and they turn into vicious, vindictive, brutal, entitled, racist, fascist beings. 


Just watch what they do to us next - to both the migrants and their sympathizers. After yesterday's event, I wouldn't be surprised if Joe Arpaio was elected as a Human Rights commissioner or something by AZ voters. As for us - I think we'll see lynching come back soon - or at least a surge in vigilantism/hate crime, police harassment, and abusive prosecutions against racial and political minorities in this state.


Boy, was there a lot of hate and fear on the State House lawns yesterday, and it wasn't coming from us. We know the arc of the universe bends towards justice - our kind, not theirs. We will work with her timeline. The Pearce/JD/Tea Party/White Supremacist crowd are the ones who are so afraid of the world out here that they have to carry guns everywhere - even though we're really the ones (the poor) who get gunned down the most.

SB 1070 passed the House and goes to the governor now, by the way.


This will be a dark era in Arizona's history. We might as well have segregated bathrooms and Jim Crow laws...


Actually, I guess we do. 


We are already the most fascist state in the country, and the lemmings here - all caught up in their own self-interest and privilege and fear - have no idea what has just been done to democracy...having forfeited the rights of others, we have forfeited our own.

All out of fear.

More people - US veterans, even - have been killed by the lack of health insurance this year than those killed by every single possible nuance of illegal immigration that can be milked from crime statistics. So, this has nothing to do with public safety or welfare, or Russ Pearce would have led the charge for health care reform and other things that really could save a lot of American lives. He's destroying the fabric of our Constitution instead - and the Republican Party is bending over backwards to help the likes of him. 

They're doing it because they know that under a true democracy they would have to share power. These people are convinced that not only do they not have to share anything, but that asking them to share any kind of resource, even in a  recession, is a direct assault on their liberty, livelihood, and even family. Thus the violent reaction to health care reform from this small segment of the community. They have intimidated their own party members into bowing down to fascism in the legislature.


That's pretty troubling, because that means that people like my grandpa and my dad, who are anti-racist at heart, despite being Republican white men, are being taken in by the flag-waving rhetoric and exploited to support things they would give their lives to fight against if they had even a clue of where we are heading. Hell, Dad already spent his life fighting this.

But even good people led astray can be capable of horrible things...there is nothing my dad wouldn't do to protect his family if we were under attack. We have to somehow make it harder for Pearce et al to turn our resistance to them into attacks on our neighbors, or we are all doomed.

--------------

Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America

By Matthew Rothschild, 

The Progressive 

April 12, 2010 

Noam Chomsky, the leading leftwing intellectual, warned last week that fascism may be coming to the United States.

“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio,” he said, “and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering” here at home.

Chomsky was speaking to more than 1,000 people at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, where he received the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship.

“The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime,” he said.

He cited a statistic from a recent poll showing that half the unaffiliated voters say the average tea party member is closer to them than anyone else.

“Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error,” Chomsky said.

Their attitudes “are understandable,” he said. “For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined. This is in large part the consequence of the decision in the 1970s to financialize the economy.”

There is class resentment, he noted. “The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels,” he said.

And Obama is linked to the bankers, Chomsky explained.

“The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain,” he said. “They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them.

And the punishment for this was very swift: They were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are “fine guys” and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’

People see that and are not happy about it.”

He said “the colossal toll of the institutional crimes of state capitalism” is what is fueling “the indignation and rage of those cast aside.”

“People want some answers,” Chomsky said. “They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.”

Chomsky invoked Germany during the Weimar Republic, and drew a parallel between it and the United States. “The Weimar Republic was the peak of Western civilization and was regarded as a model of democracy,” he said.

And he stressed how quickly things deteriorated there.

“In 1928 the Nazis had less than 2 percent of the vote,” he said. “Two years later, millions supported them. The public got tired of the incessant wrangling, and the service to the powerful, and the failure of those in power to deal with their grievances.”

He said the German people were susceptible to appeals about “the greatness of the nation, and defending it against threats, and carrying out the will of eternal providence.”

When farmers, the petit bourgeoisie, and Christian organizations joined forces with the Nazis, “the center very quickly collapsed,” Chomsky said.

No analogy is perfect, he said, but the echoes of fascism are “reverberating” today, he said.
“These are lessons to keep in mind.”

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

Senator Pearce responds to critics.

Senator Pearce's response to my weekend email volley. All the fonts, colors, etc. below are his, directly from the email. The content is intact and unaltered.

I respect him enough to let his comments speak for themselves, and not editorialize further on this post - I appreciate that he took the time to reply to my concerns, even though we deeply disagree.

----------------------

From: Russell K. Pearce <rpearce@azleg.gov>
Date: Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 10:43 AM
Subject: RE: [Prison Abolitionist] Racist, Fascist SB 1070 "Illegal is not a race..."
To: Margaret Plews <mplews@asu.edu>

Illegal is not a race, it is a crime.  What disrespect you have for the law and for the damage to Americans.  This legislation simply takes the handcuffs off from law enforcement.   50% of homicides in Phoenix involve illegal aliens.  Enough is enough. 

“If it be asked, what is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be an inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws” — Alexander Hamilton.

A Congressional report indicates that 9,000 Americans are killed every year by illegal aliens.  25 per day, 12 by stabbings and shootings and 13 by DUI and related crimes.  That is just collateral damage to the deceptive, treasonous, open border crowd.  Enough is enough. 

Today the only reasons our immigration laws are not enforced are Political, not a lack of Authority.

The last four (4) Propositions I placed on the ballot in '06 passed by an average of 75% of our citizens. 

In accordance with the Unanimous endorsement of a Resolution by the State Republican Party and the Maricopa County Republican Party at their annual organizational meetings with over 1400 PC's present in support of our citizens Constitutional right to have our laws enforced and recognizing the damage in cost in crime and dollars to Arizona citizens and taxpayers.  No more Catch & Release.  We the legal and lawful citizens demand the enforcement of our laws. 

"SUPPORT OUR LAW ENFORCEMENT AND SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD ACT" 

1. Illegal Sanctuary Policies: Eliminates ALL sanctuary cities in this state and allows legal citizens the right to sue their government for violating this law. 

2. Trespass: Makes entering or remaining in Arizona in violation of federal law a state crime and "allows" law enforcement to arrest them on trespass violation or just call ICE to take them and deport them. (law enforcement's choice).  This allows them to hold those that are being investigated for serious crimes and not have deported before the investigation is completed.

3. Day Laborer Enforcement:  Makes it illegal for an illegal alien to solicit work (day laborers) and makes a misdemeanor for anyone with a license to do business in Arizona to pick up any day laborer without filling out a employment application.  Combined while committing a criminal act, makes it a state crime to aid, harbor, conceal transport or attempt to aid, harbor, conceal or transport an illegal alien for work with a mandatory impoundment of their vehicle under 28-3511 for 30 days.  With a mandatory $1000 fine per illegal alien being transported.

Closing our borders is a must; however it must be coupled with interior enforcement. 

Attrition by enforcement. 

Strict enforcement.  It is time to renew our efforts to end ALL sanctuary policies in our states and our nation: Require officials to fully enforce federal immigration laws of the United States. NO MORE TAXPAYER BENEFITS OF ANY KIND, No Amnesty, No retreat, No surrender.  We will take back America one state at a time.   It starts here!!!!! 

 My personal background in law enforcement has given me a unique and in-touch perspective with the needs and hazards experienced by rank-and-file police officers and the threats to our citizens. www.russellpearce.com

In this effort I am proud and delighted to have the support of: 

 (9 of 15 Arizona Sheriffs have endorsed   this legislation) 

ENDORSED BY:  Polls show 75/80% of Arizonans 

Arizona State Republican Party (by Resolution) 

Maricopa County Republican Party ( unanimous with over 1400 PC's present ) 

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe 

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas 

Pinal Co. Sheriff Babeu 

Mohave Sheriff Sheahan 

Yavapai Sheriff Waugh 

Cochise Sheriff Dever 

Gila Sheriff Armer 

Navajo Sheriff Clark 

Graham Sheriff Allred 

Greenlee Sheriff Tucker 

Az FOP 

Arizona Police Association 

Phoenix Law Enforcement Association 

Glendale Police Association (87% of officers in support)

Chandler Police Association

Scottsdale Police Association

Tempe Police Association

Mesa Police Association

Maricopa Deputy's Law Enforcement Association 

Border Patrol Officers Association 

Arizona Highway Patrol Association 

Col. Albert Rodriguez - You Don't Speak for Me 

Arizona African American Republican Club 

Arizona Republican Assembly 

The Pachyderms 

Anna Gaines - American Citizens United 

Arizona's Liberty Caucus 

NAILEM, American Citizens United 

NumbersUSA 

F.A.I.R., Team America 

9-11 Families For a Secure America 

ALIPAC, Sheet Metal Workers Union 

Cement & Plasters Unio 

Sheet Metal Union

and many more.

I cannot stand by and be a spectator to the death, maiming or damage to another police officer, citizen or taxpayer by an illegal alien because we refuse to enforce our laws and fail to put America and Americans First.

Simply enforce our laws and you will see less crime, lower taxes, smaller class sizes, shorter lines in our emergency rooms and reduce deaths, murders, maimings, drugs, home invasions, car jackings, kidnappings, jobs taken from Americans, reduced wages, an ultimately save the taxpayer billions of dollars. We cannot afford to "NOT" enforce our laws. Attrition by Enforcement.

This is the “only” law we allow our elected officials to put conditions on before our police officers can do their job. The only criminals that get conditional protection from our elected and appointed officials that dictate under what circumstances an officer may ask.  In many cities it requires another crime and another victim before action can be taken.

Citizens have a constitutional right to expect the protection of federal laws which prohibit unauthorized activities by non-citizens and are denied equal protection by law enforcement, police departments or magistrates when they fail to enforce those laws.

I PLEDGE TO CONTINUE TO WORK TO ELIMINATE ALL SANCTUARY POLICIES IN THIS STATE, SECURE OUR BORDER, STOP ALL PUBLIC BENEFITS TO THOSE HERE ILLEGALLY, PROTECT OUR NEIGHBORHOODS THE BOTTOM LINE IS: THE RESULT WILL BE LESS CRIME, LOWER TAXES, SMALLER CLASSROOMS, SHORTER EMERGENCYROOM LINES, SAFER NEIGHBORHOODS, AND JOBS FOR AMERICANS AND A RESPECT FOR THE RULE OF LAW.

Many of our Politicians and Police Chiefs are in complete violation of their Oaths of Office while citizens and taxpayers pay the price.

As former Chief Deputy of Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, former Judge and now a lawmaker, I witnessed a day that I couldn’t imagine: Police chiefs throughout the Valley stood together and proclaimed their opposition to enforcing the law in complete Violation of their Oath of Office, just days after Phoenix Officer Erfle was murdered by an illegal alien.

 I sat ashen as I watched the news reports.  The chiefs of police, including Phoenix’s Harris, former Mesa’s Gascon, stood at a Press Conference and publicly refused to enforce the law. Less than a month after the brutal murder of officer Erfle at the hands of an illegal alien, they snub the opportunity to make necessary changes, all for the sake of political correctness.

 Death and maimings of police officers & citizens by illegal aliens:
 Rob Krentz,  Officer’s Figueroa, Erfle, Atkinson, Sitek, Eggle, Collins, Epling, Deputy’s Pearce & Argetsinger, Sgt. Tapia, Martin, Fass, Kirpnick, Schechterle, Gilbert mother killed, Jason Iraq veteran, Mother a "legal immigrant" killed, triple homicide, 3 illegals beat pregnant woman, 5 illegals kill principal, Feds arrest 2,100 violent criminal aliens, deputy in hit and run, Trooper Shot to Death, Day laborer killed girlfriend's baby, Muslim from Bosnia - Killed 5 in crowded shopping mall, Sniper, John Lee Malvo, required by law to be immediately deported. Instead, released Malvo and his cohort killed 10 people, two disabled teenage daughters raped Salvadoran street gang, Dep. March killed, Tricia Taylor lost both her legs, 10 year old Walter Valenzuela murdered, Kimberley Hope murdered, 5 year old Ana Cerna murdered, Joseph Crummy murdered, Amber Merkle only 8, killed, Vinessa, 23, brutally raped & murdered, and the list goes on.
9,000 Americans killed each year, 25 each day, 12 by stabbings and shootings, 13 by DUI and related crimes (Congressional Report; Drawing a Line in the Sand).
Study: 1 million sex crimes by illegals; More than 100 sex offenders crossing border daily Deborah Schurman-Kauflin: Based on a one-year in-depth study, a researcher estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each.

 Police officers have the inherent authority to uphold city, state and federal law (the law is clear and the courts have codified that authority and the Constitutional authority is clear). These officers witness the harm done to innocent Arizonans on a daily basis while their superiors instruct them to ignore their oath of office. Officers on the street have the legal authority, will and desire to enforce the law but the hierarchy stands against them, more interested in PC and harboring illegal aliens, rather than doing their job of protecting lawful citizens and that of “Public Safety”.

 The more than 800,000 state and local law enforcement officers in the United States constitute a vital force multiplier. Most importantly, state and local police officers represent a critical line of defense in the war against terrorism. In the six months before 9/11, there were four tragic missed opportunities to arrest the leaders and pilots of the 9/11 terrorists. Had the federal government acquired & disseminated information about basic civil immigration violations to local law enforcement through the NCIC system, several terrorists might have been arrested, and the 9/11 plot might have unraveled. The 4 ring leaders all had been stopped by law enforcement just prior to 9/11 and all in violation of immigration law. As George Santayana reminded us: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. . . . Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

 While “We the People” debate the action or lack thereof from the federal government, our cities, neighborhoods, our streets have turned into war zones. Legions of illegal alien gangs fight for the right to smuggle drugs and people. An illegal alien pulled over by police for a traffic offense has no worries about facing anything more than a small fine, many of our Chiefs prefer to wait until they kill someone of commit a serious felony. A congressional Homeland Security Committee report estimates that illegals kill over 9,000 Americans a year; annually they kill twice the number of Americans than the brave soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq to date.

Many of these have prior contacts or arrests and still remain in the U.S. Enough is enough. Had our laws been enforced 9-11 probably would have been averted.  4 of the 5 pilots and main conspirators in the 9-11 terrorist attack had contact with law enforcement and were released, all in violation of our immigration laws.

After years of witnessing the increase in crime, it is inexcusable for our Valley’s police chiefs to maintain their sanctuary policies. We can not stand by and tolerate them putting the rights of non-citizens above citizens.

 Every day the cost of ignoring the border increases tax fraud, identity theft, and property crimes, a burden on Arizona residents; billions to educate, medicate and incarcerate; but the irreversible cost of violent crimes can not be endured any more.

 Police chiefs in this state are more interested in putting handcuffs on their officers than illegal aliens.

Arizonans have spoken loudly and yet they refuse to listen:

 In '04 I put a Citizens Initiative on the ballot, requiring proof of citizenship & ID at the polls to vote (a terrible blow to ACORN in their registration drives), and denying public benefits to illegal aliens; in '06 I put 4 Referendums on the ballot, and in Nov. by a 75% average citizens passed Propositions 100, denying bail to illegals who commit serious felonies; 102, denying punitive damages to illegals; 103, making English Arizona's Official Language; and 300, denying public benefits to those in our country illegally.

We also passed at the legislature the toughest Worksite Enforcement bill in the nation, "The Fair and Legal Employment Act".

I am not sure what part of "illegal" they don't understand, but finally the citizens are standing up and demanding we tackle the problem of illegal immigration. Let's take the handcuffs off from our police officers; Arizona will finally be able to give away its title as a crime capital of the United States.

By allowing our cops on the beat to do their jobs, they could be responsible for the one of the largest crime reduction programs in state history.

Those that refuse to follow their constitutional duty or live up to their oath of office should be forced to step aside and make way for honest, hard-working law enforcement officers that know their job and cost of not doing it. Your Mayor and City Council would have to do their job first.

 If we must, let’s take it to the voters by initiative in states that have a citizen’s initiative process. I trust the voters to have the final say.

Resolution to Enforce Our Immigration laws and Secure Our Border:

Whereas, The Arizona Republican Party recognizes, “If it be asked, what is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be an inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws” — Alexander Hamilton.

Therefore, be it resolved by the Arizona Republican Party of the State of Arizona:

1. Establishes that there is a significant public interest in the effective enforcement of immigration law & the states are bound by the Supremacy Clause of the United ‘States Constitution to enforce violations of the federal immigration laws:

2. The illegal alien invasion has a corresponding increase in violent crimes, gangs, threat to public health, billions in cost to the taxpayer, jobs taken from Americans; and

3. Demands the elimination of all sanctuary policies in the state of Arizona and require the enforcement of our immigration laws & require law enforcement to turn over to federal authorities for removal from the United States all illegal aliens & where necessary tried and punished for criminal activity before removal.

4. Require state officials to take action that would secure the Arizona – Mexico border including putting the National Guard in a primary role on the border.

5. That all agencies and employers ensure compliance with all federal and state laws and regulations related to the immigration status of all employees.

Opposed to these rationalizations are the facts: (Gilbert Office after arresting an illegal alien on a traffic stop found him to be wanted on a homicide warrant, yet he had his Matricular card)

•     We spend about $1 billion annually in K-12 on illegal aliens
•     Arizona #2 in the World in kidnappings

·         Illegal alien abuse of our medical facilities has forced many to close

·         Illegal aliens use our deserts to dump their non-degradable garbage

·         Through increases in taxation, our representatives are stealing our property in order to redistribute our wealth to illegal aliens.

·         In the U.S., 26 citizens a day are killed by the actions of illegal aliens

·         Services we are required to provide to illegals are bankrupting our states and lowering our quality of life and quality of education

·         Tucson public schools use race based ethnic study courses to denigrate the U.S., inculcating loyalty to Mexico

·         Abetting illegals enables the culture of corruption they bring to grow: Kidnapping, ID theft, drug wars, murder, vehicular manslaughter, gangs, graffiti, drop houses, hostage taking, blackmail, rape and death during transport of illegals, home invasions

·         voting for sanctuary cities allows potential terrorists, who are illegals, to walk our streets with impunity (4 of the 5 leaders and pilots of the 9-11 terrorist were stopped by law enforcement and released and were in violation of our immigration laws.  Had they been arrested 9-11 would have been averted.