Plus, I don't think the supporters of this bill have really thought it out. What's to stop a neighbor from calling the cops and telling them that x person is here illegally. Under this law, that surely constitutes reasonable suspicion of someone's illegal status. The cop has to pursue it or the person who brings the complaint has the right to sue the police and have his attorney's fees paid for. You'll have little white guy mobs running all over town calling the cops to have them check the papers of people who are minding their own business. It's an extremely dangerous bill.
But you're not addressing the potential for all the legal residents and citizens to be harassed and "asked for their papers" without actually doing anything wrong. It's their civil liberties that are (potentially) threatened.
Sure they can, we went over that in the other thread. Please define "lawful contact" for me. I'm going to guess you cant since no law has ever used that term before and no court case or the constitution of Arizona ever makes a reference to it.
As I mentioned earlier, they changed it to "lawful stop, detention or arrest". I guess even those could be misconstrued, but I think the intention is obvious.
This is the simple opinion that makes it interesting to me. And possibly why there's more support for it than just entitled grumpy white men. The lax enforcement of border crossing actually causes some resentment with actual Latinos who went through the legal process. Its like why should you stay up all night every day, locking yourself in a room not going out on dates or going out anywhere, reading and studying all semester to get a 95. When all everyone else did was party the whole semester, skipped class, they didnt even buy any books AND they're getting their tuition reimbursed, and they still all got a 92? I respect the stance on border enforcement, but this current law is going to inconvenience SO many legal people. Why even have a border patrol if you're going to rely on ordinary police force to sweep them up?
I'm not totally in the know on all the laws, but I think you can do that already. This law would just encourage it more of course. Its not like illegals haven't been ratted out by someone before though (I dont have hard proof, but we can assume illegals have been deported before) The law did get amended to be mean "lawful stop" instead of lawful contact. So a person has to do something wrong first before they get their citizenship questioned. An officer can walk right up to you and talk to you. But you dont have to answer him back. Thats always been the case. I just dont see how it'll all operate smoothly. Intentions maybe good/Execution probably terrible.
You could always do this but you had to call ICE and not the local police. Although I suspect if you called the local police and they felt it was important they could call ICE themselves. What this law does though is allow the local police to investigate and take into custody someone over an immigration violation. This is a problem in three regards. The first is that its not clear if a state has Constitutional authority to do that since the Constitution empowers the Fed to do that. Second, the state doesn't have the means to enforce that law without relying on the Federal government. The third and IMO most dangerous part of this law is it changes the relationship between the local police and the immigrant community. Many in law enforcement have come out opposing this law because it creates distrust between them and the immigrant community who aren't likely to cooperate with the police on other issues if they fear that the local police will be cracking down on them for immigration violations. Its like the Don't snitch campaign that makes it harder for the local police to get after other crimes. If that is the standard, that they can only stop and questions someone if they are under suspicion of another crime, then the law is unneccessary as the AZ police could do that before. They can detain someone for suspicion over another crime and if they suspect they are here illegally they could call ICE to take them.
The thing had to be amended like a week after it was signed by the Governor? Shouldn't this kind of stuff be taken care of BEFORE the bill gets signed?
I see. And agree on all. I commented already I dont like how its going from ICE to local police. Police now are just tax collectors for the state and contracted goons for special interests. I think Arizona is completely right in that the Fed is doing nothing on the issue. It encourages states to take matters into their own hands. I do like that Arizona is doing something about the issue. I dont like the actual plan laid out. Racial profiling/severe large scale racial inconvenience, whatever you want to call it, they're going to piss off 10-20 legal americans for every 1 illegal they nab.
This is a rather undistinguished -- and therefore uncharacteristic -- comment from you, DM. Basso, OddsOn and myself may sometimes have opposing views or may at times have disappointed you in some fashion or another, but I don't think any of us have deliberately lied to you or anyone else on the board. Speaking for myself for the moment, I can tell you categorically that I have not.
basso certainly has. You may not have, and odds on never discusses anything long enough to tell whether it's ignorance or a lie.
