Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Border Enforcement
Isn’t It About Time We Thought Realistically About Border Security?
011 months ago
Old thinking on border security was on grand display today during a House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee hearing titled “Securing our Borders – Operational Control and the Path Forward.” Congress’ seemingly insatiable appetite for border enforcement does not seem to be assuaged by the reality at the border. Despite the record number of resources added to border enforcement over the past decade, the number of undocumented immigrants has risen to record levels. It has also created an unintended but real boon for the criminal cartels that now have a steady flow of migrants to smuggle into the U.S. But there are substantive and realistic efforts Congress can make to help secure the border.
The starkest example of old thinking at the hearing today came from Congressman Mike Rodgers of Alabama who asked Border Patrol Chief Michael J. Fisher the least thoughtful questions of the hearing. “What do you need to secure the border? What do you need to provide that rock solid prevention of illegal immigration?” Rodgers was clearly talking about money—how much money would CBP need. But the answer isn’t in monetary form. Congress has appropriated record amounts of money to personnel and technology at the border and the number of deportations has increased dramatically. But the only way to truly secure the border is to address the root causes of unauthorized immigration and other negative activity at the border.
In a publication today by researchers at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, Eric Olson and David Shirk discuss how record levels of spending on border security have, in fact, made our border less secure:
Concentrated enforcement at the border has not increased the net effectiveness of counter-drug or immigration-control efforts. Indeed, no matter where you stand on the debate on drugs or unauthorized immigration, nearly everyone agrees on one thing: no specific policy decision to beef up border security in the last 20 to 30 years has significantly reduced the flow of illicit drugs and people into the United States. The accumulation of 11 million undocumented immigrants—often at a rate of over 400,000 annually—has provided a testament to this failure.
Olson and Shirk disentangle the multiple missions at the border—drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and illegal immigration among them. They find that Congress appears most interested in immigration. In order to truly address border security, they recommend strategic deployment of personnel, improved intelligence sharing and law enforcement in cooperation with Mexican law enforcement, and comprehensive immigration reform that includes a legalization program that would bring otherwise law-abiding immigrants out of the shadows and onto the grid so workers can be deciphered from dangerous criminals. They write:
Rather than focus all our efforts on patrolling the border, security might be enhanced by redeploying U.S. resources and personnel on intelligence-based law-enforcement efforts. For example, rather than increasing outbound inspections to disrupt the trafficking of bulk cash, the U.S. should focus law-enforcement efforts on hub cities where traffickers gather and package cash to bring back to Mexico. Likewise, collaborative law-enforcement efforts that focus on illegal gun sales in high traffic areas near the border have resulted in more cases being referred for prosecution, and are more effective than costly and disruptive attempts to monitor border crossings.
Congress may persist with the unrealistic notion that we can build enough fences, erect enough technology and deploy enough officers, but we still won’t prevent or bring an end to illegal immigration with enforcement alone. Now that there are thoughtful alternatives being offered, it’s about time Congress took a realistic look at the border and begin work on sensible approaches to solving the problems at our southern border.
Photo by hermmermferm.
Will “Stepping on the Gas” of Immigration Enforcement Drive Us Into A Brick Wall?
01 year ago
Today, the newly re-named Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement held its first hearing on worksite enforcement, which, as expected, did not delve into important policy questions surrounding worksite enforcement. The Republican members of the subcommittee called on the usual suspects to minimize the Obama administration’s enforcement efforts, even though Deputy Director of ICE, Kumar Kibble, stated quite clearly that ICE has achieved record numbers of investigations, audits, fines, and deportations. One can’t help but wonder if subcommittee hardliners would be satisfied had the Administration’s enforcement numbers been doubled or even tripled. For that matter, after listening to the majority members, one wonders whether any amount of enforcement would be sufficient to meet their expectations.
Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the full Judiciary Committee who sat in the hearing ex officio, wasted no time in positioning worksite enforcement as a way to create jobs for Americans, even though there is ample evidence that deporting more immigrants will not open up those jobs to U.S. unemployed workers. Once again, Rep. Smith and the other members of the Immigration Reform Caucus posed as champions of the American worker even though their voting records clearly suggest otherwise.
While everyone is clearly concerned about the nation’s high unemployment level, Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) made the important point that “stepping on the gas” of increased immigration enforcement without comprehensively addressing the immigration system will destroy, not create, new jobs. This point was echoed by the minority witness, Dan Griswold of the CATO Institute.
“The real world economy doesn’t work that way,” he stated. “Low-skilled immigrants, whether legal or illegal, do not compete directly with the large majority of American workers. […] We cannot enforce our way out of unemployment. There is no casual relationship between inflows of immigration and higher overall unemployment in the U.S. economy.”
Unfortunately, other policy points and important voices were not raised at today’s hearing. Rather than argue about how many people are being deported, the time could have been used more constructively to discuss the need for effective, targeted worksite enforcement that focuses on employers who violate labor and employment laws and exploit immigrant workers, which hurt U.S. workers and law-abiding employers in the process.
Javier Morillo of SEIU stated the problem well:
“ICE is not targeting egregious, criminal employers. In fact, their actions are turning the federal government into an employment agency for the worst employers in the country. In the wake of audits, immigrant workers are pushed into the underground economy, exploited and paid under the table.”
Most importantly, worksite enforcement can only be truly effective if done in conjunction with comprehensive immigration reform—something President Obama alluded to in the State of the Union Address last night and Rep. Zoe Lofgren addressed in today’s hearing:
All the stats are up—number of people deported, spending more money on the border today than in the history of U.S., we have more men on the border than in the history of U.S.—but we have failed, as a Congress, to come to grips to reform the system so that it actually works for Americans. […] You can’t repeal the law of supply and demand. We have a situation that is chaotic when we need order.
Hopefully, future subcommittee hearings will focus on constructive debate—debate that moves the ball forward on larger policy solutions for our entire immigration system, not just the same enforcement-only approach over and over again.
Photo by Potatojunkie.
U.S. Border Czar Calls on Congress to Get Serious about Immigration Reform
01 year ago
While some candidates continue to make political fodder out of immigration and border security on the campaign trail, administration officials are pushing Congress to get real about overhauling our broken immigration system. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner, Alan Bersin, recently commented that Congress needs to ‘get serious about a post-election immigration overhaul if the nation is to deal with the duality of enforcing border security while facilitating trade.’ In the wake of the nation’s SB1070-inspired border frenzy, some may be surprised to learn that there’s more to immigration than targeting undocumented immigrants and securing the border. A big part of Bersin’s job also involves regulating the flow of trade and commerce across the border, as well as expediting travel—priorities that tend to get lost in empty debate over who’s the toughest on undocumented immigration.
Last week at the Migration Policy Institute, border czar Alan Bersin commented that we need to expand the immigration debate beyond enforcement rhetoric to address other policy areas:
In truth, neither mass amnesty nor mass deportations will solve a problem that’s rooted in labor markets, which is why President Obama has shown a “fierce determination to stop kicking the can down the road” and supported a bipartisan proposal presented by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., last spring, as well as legislation (S 3932) Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., introduced shortly before the pre-election recess.
These legislative proposals would take immigration to a place it failed to go after the 1986 overhaul (PL 99-603), which provided a path to citizenship but failed to confront illegal immigration, Bersin said. Since then, the immigration debate has centered on control and enforcement — a focus that magnified exponentially after Sept. 11, Bersin said. But, he added, enforcement and normalization cannot succeed without appropriate coordination with other policy.
Bersin’s comments echo what many immigration experts have been saying for months—that enforcement-first, border-only approach to immigration is not a winning strategy…that we need to overhaul our entire immigration system. Back in June, Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano made similar statements regarding reform, border security, and trade:
The plain fact of the matter is the border is as secure now as it’s ever been… the notion that you’re going to somehow seal the border and only at that point will you discuss immigration reform, that is not an answer to the problem … recognizing also that there’s a lot of trade and commerce we want going back and forth.
Former DHS Assistant Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Policy, Stewart Verdery, also pointed out that securing the border is an elusive goal, and that without comprehensive immigration reform, we will never achieve the real objectives needed to end illegal immigration.
So what will the immigration narrative be like after mid-term elections? More of the same go-nowhere enforcement-only rhetoric which completely ignores other policy areas like commerce and trade? Or perhaps we can expect a more nuanced approach—one that looks at economic, labor-driven and administrative realities of our immigration system? If the last few months are any indicator, however, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Photo by defense.gov.
House Republicans Pledge More of the Same on Immigration
01 year ago
It was a week of broken dreams and empty promises for immigration reform. The failure of the Senate to take up the DREAM Act illustrated once again that good policy isn’t enough to make legislation work. And over on the House side, GOP members unveiled their “Pledge to America,” a pledge that promises, among other things, more of the same deportation-driven strategies for resolving our immigration crisis. Although the public appears to have an insatiable appetite for talking tough on illegal immigration, if cable shows and Tea Party candidates are your measure of the public taste, catering to the worst of the public’s instincts is not a strategy for the long run.
The immigration components of the pledge promise:
- Establish Operational Control of the Border: We must take action to secure our borders, and that action starts with enforcing our laws. We will ensure that the Border Patrol has the tools and authorities to establish operational control at the border and prohibit the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture from interfering with Border Patrol enforcement activities on federal lands.
- Work with State and Local Officials to Enforce Our Immigration Laws: The problem of illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartels engaged in an increasingly violent conflict means we need all hands on deck to address this challenge. We will reaffirm the authority of state and local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of all federal immigration laws.
- Strengthen Visa Security: To stop terrorists like Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, we will require the Department of Homeland Security to review all visa applications at high-risk consular posts and prevent aliens from attempting to avoid deportation after having their visas revoked.
The topline messages—secure operational control of the border, work with state and local officials to enforce the law, and strengthen visa security emphasize security, enforcement, and strength. The accompanying descriptions suggest that the Border Patrol doesn’t get the money to do its job, that undocumented immigrants and drug cartels are engaged in a bloody conflict that requires all “hands on deck”, and that the State Department isn’t doing enough to screen terrorists.
In other words, the pledge recycles and updates the same talking points that have driven an immigration enforcement agenda for a decade. The immigration pledge promises to maintain the status quo, which is not just disappointing, but shortsighted.
First of all, it’s not what the public wants on immigration. People want solutions that go beyond tough talk. Nor does it reflect the reality of our broken immigration system or the priorities currently in place. What exactly is “operational control” of the border? What exactly would that cost? Doesn’t the $600 million border package Congress passed just before it left for August recess suggest that the one thing Congress knows how to do is throw money at the border? The federal government has spent billions of dollars on border and interior enforcement over the last several years ($3.0 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 alone—a nine-fold increase since FY 1992). While the number of undocumented border crossings is currently down (due, in large part, to the economic recession), research indicates that the number is likely to increase as the economy recovers—which begs the question, when will the border ever be secure enough to enact comprehensive immigration reform?
All hands on deck? Unless this suggests that the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are going to be pressed into service, it’s hard to imagine how many more ways the federal and state/local systems can become more intertwined. States and localities already work with the federal government to enforce our immigrations laws through programs like
Secure Communities, 287(g) agreements, Criminal Alien Program, Fugitive Operations Teams, and E-Verify.
But by mentioning “Mexican drug cartels” and illegal immigrants in the same breath, it’s clear that the “Pledge to America” has something else in mind. Support for new state and local enforcement laws, like Arizona’s controversial SB1070, seems to be the real innovation here. (Never mind that such laws undermine federal enforcement priorities, place a strain on scant state resources, and are increasingly found to be unconstitutional.)
Our immigration system is far more complex than most people realize and yet most people also understand that enforcement alone is not enough. A systematic overhaul of our immigration system—one that includes legalization for the roughly 11 million people already here, a reduction in immigration backlogs that keep families apart, a flexible and fair system for bringing in new workers, and reasonable enforcement—would create a solid base on which to build an immigration system that helps the country succeed in the 21st century. While parading enforcement-only around as a solution may stir the conservative base, it does nothing to solve the multi-faceted problems within the immigration system.
In a week that began with Senate Republicans complaining that the Democrats were playing politics with the military in order to pass the DREAM Act, House Republicans showed that they were equally capable of playing politics with immigration. As usual, this meant relying on tired rhetoric and a pledge to increase enforcement, without any concern for the consequences.
Photo by republicanconference.
Anti-Immigrant Hysteria in Arizona Won’t End With the Primaries
01 year ago
The Republican Party primaries in Arizona may be over, but the anti-immigrant demagoguery upon which the winning candidates built their campaigns is unlikely to fade away anytime soon. Governor Jan Brewer and Senator John McCain both managed to reverse their declining political fortunes in large part by raising the phantom specter of immigrant violence—a cynical tactic they are likely to repeat in the midterm elections. For instance, both trumpeted the discredited claim that Phoenix is the number two kidnapping capital of the world after Mexico City, and portrayed their various and sundry proposals to “get tough” on unauthorized immigrants as sincere efforts to save Arizonans from kidnappers and other violent criminals.
What Brewer and McCain neglected to mention in their campaign rhetoric, however, is that unauthorized immigrants are the primary victims of the kidnappings that do occur. As Terry Greene Sterling describes in her book Illegal: Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone, most of the kidnapping victims in Phoenix are unauthorized immigrants held for ransom by the smugglers (coyotes) they hire to bring them to the United States. These are “drop house” kidnappings in which “incoming migrants at the border are baited with low smuggling fares. Those low fares are ramped up by thousands of dollars once the migrants are held at gunpoint in a drop house.” Such “drop house” kidnappings are distinct from “home invasion” kidnappings, “in which kidnappers abduct rich individuals, like drug dealers or human smugglers, or their family members.”
Brewer and McCain are also apparently unaware of the fact that rates for both property crime and violent crime (including murder, assault, and rape) have fallen in Arizona in recent years, including in the state’s three largest cities: Phoenix, Tucson, and Mesa. Moreover, crime rates in Arizona border towns have remained flat for the past decade despite the surge in unauthorized immigration. And a 2008 report from the conservative Americas Majority Foundation found that crime rates in general are lowest in states with the highest immigration growth rates, including Arizona.
The truth which Brewer and McCain seem so determined to ignore is that unauthorized immigrants have been driven into the waiting arms of both smugglers and kidnappers by more than a decade and a half of failed border-enforcement initiatives which have been implemented in the absence of immigration reform. Were Congress and the White House to actually reform our immigration system to match reality, unauthorized immigration would slow to a trickle, the market for people smugglers would dry up, and kidnappers would no longer have a large pool of vulnerable immigrants to hold for ransom.
Of course, were that to happen, politicians such as Brewer and McCain could no longer score political points by crowing about kidnapping without mentioning who is actually being kidnapped—or why. Given their successful use of such fear-mongering in the primaries, however, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Photo by plymouthlibrary.
Bordering on Reality
01 year ago
Last weekend, hundreds of well-informed tea party activists rallied around a border fence in Hereford, Arizona. Many participants, fearing danger at the border, brought weapons. Luckily, the more level-headed organizers convinced them that they would be ok if they left the side-arms in their vehicles. Many voiced concerns were comical at best, with a local radio host claiming that while he was used to finding bugs in his bed, now he was worried that “home invaders” would be there.
These strange fears ignore some basic facts:
- We spend more money on border enforcement than ever before. The annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol stood at $3.0 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2009—a nine-fold increase since FY 1992. The combined budgets of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the parent agency of the Border Patrol within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the DHS interior-enforcement counterpart to CBP, grew from $9.1 billion in FY 2003 to $17.2 billion in FY 2010.
- Violent crime in Arizona is at its lowest rate in years. FBI data confirms that violent crime rates in Phoenix, Tucson, and Mesa are all down in recent years, in addition to violent crime rates being down statewide.
- Border crossings aren’t the only way unauthorized immigrants enter the U.S. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that between 25 percent and 40 percent of all unauthorized immigrants do not sneak across the border, but come to the United States on valid visas and then stay after their visas expire.
A new poll commissioned by Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso, Tex., and conducted by the independent polling firm The Reuel Group, Inc., found that more than 87% of people living along the southwest border feel safe, compared to 8% who did not feel safe and 5% who were undecided (The poll surveyed 1,222 adults, primarily likely voters, in 10 communities along the U.S. border: Douglas, Nogales and Yuma, Ariz., El Centro and San Diego, Calif., Las Cruces, N.M. and Brownsville, El Paso, Laredo, McAllen, Tex.).
Despite the presence of nervous tea-partiers along the border, Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D) stated that much of the fear of border violence comes from people not near the border, but to the north.
“The fear that folks have around border security largely rests in the interior, from folks who live far away from the border,” says Sinema, adding that this is because they get their information from politicians and the media. People who live along the border, Sinema says, know that “we have not seen an increase in border-related violence in the last 18 years. If anything, we’ve seen a decrease in the last 10 years.”
In a recent interview, the CBP Commissioner, Alan Bersin, stated that on the U.S. side of the southwest border, “the communities along the border are safe.” Certainly, there are questions to be answered along the border, especially on the Mexican side. However, mass hysteria over an issue which is less of a problem than it is in years seems misguided. Perhaps energy should be focused on real issues like the passage of comprehensive immigration reform.
Photo by Cobalt123
The Immigration Debate Goes South: Politicians Make $600 Million Dollar Investment in their Political Futures
01 year ago
Today, after months of political wagering from both Republicans and Democrats, the Senate unanimously passed a $600 million dollar bill marked for border security which is now headed to President Obama’s desk for signature. While the sequence of events leading to this most recent capitulation to the enforcement-first crowd is a little dizzying, the bill’s unanimous passage was partly a product of a bluff called on the Senate floor. Although the substance of the bill could have been much worse, the mere fact that the only major immigration legislation passed thus far in the 111th Congress was another border bill shows how far we are from treating immigration as a serious issue, rather than a political game.
To recap: On August 5, in the last few hours before adjourning for recess, the Senate passed a state aid package. Claiming to call the Republican’s bluff (meaning that as much as they want more border security, Senate Republicans aren’t ever going to give the Democrats a victory on an immigration bill), Senate Democrats brought their version of a $600 million border bill to the floor—“fully funded” through fee increases to business visa categories. Instead of objecting, Senator McCain asked that he and Sen. Kyl be included as cosponsors of the bill. Senator Sessions came down to the floor to say that the bill isn’t enough, but a good start. In a Senate marked by the lack of unanimous consent, no one objected to the bill and it passed by a voice vote. The bill went back to the House for a vote mandated by jurisdictional funding issues, then back to the Senate where it was again passed by unanimous consent today.
Bluff called.
But governing isn’t about bluffing. In all of this heady back and forth and politicking and angling for election in November, the substantive issues of what must be done to fix our broken immigration system are once more lost. The irony is that some of the provisions in this mega-million border bill have strong bipartisan support—enhancing communications systems and creating forward operating bases for Border Patrol have long been championed by border legislators of both parties. For example, the bill:
- Provides more money for drug enforcement actions to ATF actually addressing some of the real problems along the border and, if used wisely, could help reduce trafficking and the flow of drugs and money back and forth along the border.
- Lacks some of the more controversial and questionable proposals such as funding for the fence or Operation Stonegarden (providing federal money to local law enforcement to conduct immigration enforcement).
- Provides more money to the judiciary and immigration courts, which is a sensible acknowledgment that you can’t increase enforcement and ignore the added costs of doing business for the judicial and administrative branches.
But any good that might come of this is likely to be cancelled out by the political points that anti-immigration folks will score with these actions. Immigration activists have come out swinging, accusing the Democrats of knuckling under and ignoring the strong public support for a more comprehensive answer. Political operatives continue to insist that it was essential for Democrats to have a vote on enforcement. Senator Reid’s decision to call for an immediate vote on the bill suggests that the politicians didn’t think they can have this hanging over their heads until September. In short, politicians have made a $600 million dollar investment in their political futures.
And the game continues. President Obama, Sen. Schumer and Sen. Reid have all issued statements claiming that this border security bill is a good first step towards securing comprehensive immigration reform. Yet true to form, Sens. Kyl and McCain, eyeing the cards on the table, claimed the bill, although welcomed, still wasn’t enough. It’s hard to imagine that this will be the last call for emergency funds on the border, as Congress loves to tell its constituents that they are being made safer by money well-spent on border security. This is the real bluff that needs to be called—the one Congress keeps using on all of us.
Photo by sbisson.
Poll Numbers Reveal that Most Border Residents Feel Safe
01 year ago
Passage of the $600 million border bill through the House of Representatives today is a clear indication that Congress is still more interested in throwing money at our broken immigration system rather than rolling up their sleeves and fixing it. Politicians, including President Obama, continue to respond to reports of border violence by upping the budget of DHS without hard facts, relying on media reports that the safety of U.S. citizens is at stake along the U.S.- Mexico border .
Yet, in stunning contrast today, the Border Network for Human Rights released the results of a poll conducted July 14-15 among residents who live along the U.S.–Mexico border. The poll revealed that among the 1,222 border residents surveyed, the overwhelmingly majority felt safe—in the communities such as Douglas, Nogales and Yuma, Arizona; El Centro and San Diego, California; Las Cruces, New Mexico, and four Texas border cities including Brownsville, El Paso, Laredo and McAllen.
Results from the poll shatter the national perception of border community safety. The report notes:
The overwhelming majority of respondents said they felt safe living in their border communities (67.1 percent), they felt their neighborhood was as safe as most neighborhoods in the United States (69.7 percent), and they felt safe going about their daily activities (walking and driving in their neighborhood: 87.5 percent; and allowing a child to play in a neighborhood park: 51.8 percent). Only 7.8 percent of respondents said they did not feel safe walking or driving in their neighborhood.
In Douglas, Ariz., 76.8 percent of respondents said they felt safe as they walked and drove in their neighborhood during their regular daily activities; in Nogales, they were 90 percent; and in Yuma, they were 94.5 percent.
The report ends with a set of policy recommendations which do not call for an end to all border enforcement, but rather a beginning for smarter enforcement policies—including a closer look at “the cost-effectiveness of border enforcement policies.” This review, in addition to getting a true sense of how those residents on the border actually feel about their safety and security, would be a good starting place for Congress. This poll reflects a side to the immigration debate that is being drowned out by the sensational rhetoric of a small but loud group of politicians running for reelection.
Photo by mkrigsman.
Senate Democrats Propose Alternate Border Security Bill
01 year ago
Today, Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) released a Border Security Proposal which would provide $600 million in offset funding for various border security provisions. The bill was a counter to a different border security bill proposed by Republican Arizona Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain, which would have gleaned its funding from the 2009 economic stimulus.
The Schumer-McCaskill bill proposes $175.9 million for the hiring of additional Border Patrol agents on the southwest border, $50 million for additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, $14 million for additional border fencing, $32 million for unmanned aerial vehicles, and funding for a number of other programs designed to secure the border and fight drug and gun smuggling.
Judge’s Decision Doesn’t Stop Arizona from Combating Border Violence
01 year ago
Yesterday, Phoenix district court Judge Susan Bolton enjoined key provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB1070. The judge recognized that the federal government has primary authority over making and enforcing immigration law, and that while states have limited authority in this arena, they cannot interfere with federal enforcement or undermine federal priorities. The decision acknowledges the complex nature of immigration law and the harmful consequences of local police attempting to make immigration determinations. The judge also recognized the serious strain that the Arizona law would place on federal resources, which would detract from the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration laws in other states and target resources toward serious criminals.
Judge Bolton struck down the following provisions of SB 1070:
- Section 2(B): Required officers to check the immigration status of any person arrested, as well as check the immigration status if there was reasonable suspicion after a lawful stop or detention that the person was undocumented.
- Section 3: Made it a state misdemeanor for failure to carry an alien registration document, and made it a state crime to be unlawfully present in the United States.
- Part of Section 5: Made it a state misdemeanor for an unauthorized immigrant to apply for, solicit for, or perform work.
- Section 6 Amendment: Allowed officers to make warrantless arrests provided the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States.
The ruling left SB 1070, which goes into effect today, with the following provisions, among others, still intact:
- Section 2(G): An Arizona citizen may bring an action against any official or agency of Arizona that does not enforce federal immigration laws to the fullest extent, and pay a penalty of $1,000 to $5,000 for each day that the policy was in effect.
- Section 4: Makes it a felony to intentionally smuggle human beings for profit.
- Section 5: Makes it a misdemeanor to stop on a street and attempt to hire or pick up passengers for work at a different location if the vehicle blocks traffic. Also makes it a misdemeanor to be the person picked up in such a motor vehicle.
- Section 5: Makes it a misdemeanor for a person already in violation of a criminal offense to transport undocumented immigrants, conceal undocumented immigrants, or encourage undocumented immigrants to reside in the United States.
The provisions struck down by the judge do not prevent law enforcement from addressing the real threats to public safety in Arizona, like drug smuggling and violence. It’s about time the Governor returned focus and resources back to real remedies that will improve the lives of Arizonans instead of playing campaign politics with such an important issue.
Sadly, SB 1070 has always been more about politics than good policy. This was most evident immediately following Judge Bolton’s ruling when Arizona Governor Jan Brewer announced her plans to appeal the decision and simultaneously used the opportunity to solicit donations for her re-election campaign. Similarly, Senator John McCain seized on the political opportunity by issuing a joint statement with Senator John Kyl decrying the decision:
We are deeply disappointed in the court’s ruling today and disagree with the court’s opinion that the Arizona’s law will unduly ‘burden’ the enforcement of federal immigration law. “Instead of wasting tax payer resources filing a lawsuit against Arizona and complaining that the law would be burdensome, the Obama Administration should have focused its efforts on working with Congress to provide the necessary resources to support the state in its efforts to act where the Federal government has failed to take responsibility.” “After this decision, it’s even more important to implement our Ten Point Border Security plan to protect Arizonans and our country.”
The reality is that we are spending more money on border security than ever before, and violent crimes rates in Arizona have been falling for years. Arizonans, like most Americans, are understandably frustrated by our broken immigration system, but usurping federal immigration authority and pushing “attrition through enforcement” legislation isn’t going to solve anything. In fact, it only stands to interfere with community policing and identifying the true threats. Until we have bipartisan support on a real solution like comprehensive immigration reform, we’re going to continue to enforce ourselves in circles.
Photo by Jeffrey Kaye.
