John StGeorge's List: Illegal Immigration

• 287(g), passed by Congress in 1996 as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
• 287(g) encourages partnerships between federal and state/local law enforcement to tackle the problem of illegal immigration.
• there are 63 jurisdictions in 20 states (including Arizona) that already have partnership agreements with ICE.
• The joint agreements require that ICE provide training, including training to protect the civil rights of individuals and prevent profiling. They also require that ICE agents supervise local officers when they are engaged in immigration enforcement activity.
• To suggest that immigration is the exclusive domain of the federal government, disallowing partnerships with local law enforcement, defies the will of Congress
• there is a presumption that the legitimate police powers of the states are not to be pre-empted by federal law unless Congress has made that purpose clear. When Congress has been an active partner in promoting state and local enforcement partnerships, as in the case of immigration, there should be no real pre-emption debate.
• examples of federal-state partnerships
• For instance, Joint Drug Enforcement Task Forces comprising federal, state and local law enforcement to combat illicit drugs - including drugs being smuggled across U.S. borders - are common.

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• Hines v. Davidowitz.
• There are several problems with the judge's rulings. First, she makes no citation to the record for evidence to support her findings.
• she cites no evidence to support her finding that
• She also cites no evidence to support her finding tha
• The bottom line is that her findings amount to sheer speculation.

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• there is no federal law allowing for racial profiling and arresting people because they look “illegal,”

  • And the Arizona law specifically prohibits racial profiling and arresting people because they look illegal.
• he took Section 263 of the INA

  • Which has nothing to do with the Arizona law.
• and turned it into “Special Registration” or NSEERS.
•  Section 264(e) makes it a federal misdemeanor, punishable by 30 days in jail and/or a $100 fine, to fail to carry one’s ”certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt car issued to him pursuant to subsection (d).”
• Canadians who enter by showing a passport are given no proof of entry

  • Anyone who enters on a passport has their stamped passport as proof of legal entry, and many also have a visa attached.
• the racial profiling provision found in Section 3 of HB2162, now A.R.S.  Section 11-1051.

  • 11-1058 states: "may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution."

  • 11-1058 B specificall states that "race, color, national origin cannot be used
• What are “articuable facts” to a trained ICE or CBP officer of a person’s illegal presence in the United States, versus what those facts are to a Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff? 

  • "Articuable facts" to a trained ICE of CBP officer are the same as those for a County Deputy Sheriff.
• this new Arizona law will lead to racial profiling,

  • And speed limit laws lead to speeders so they must also be unconstitutional.
• what is “reasonable suspicion”

  • As if it isn't well defined in law already.

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• the government of Mexico trusts that this decision will help to channel additional U.S. resources to enhance efforts to prevent the illegal flows of weapons and bulk cash into Mexico, which provide organized crime with its firepower and its ability to corrupt.

  • More than 80% of the weapons in Mexico come from countries other than the US. And do you really believe that millions in cash are carried in backpacks across the US desert and into Mexico?

• Tancredo said 1,200 troops for a 2,000 mile border is an inadequate number because there have been requests for up to 8,000, with 6,000 in the Arizona area alone. 

    

  Former Rep. Tom Tancredo

   

  "Remember, 1,200 means 400 in three shifts," he said.

  • If you have 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week, you need to divide by 5, not by 3. That would mean only 240 troops per shift or one troop per 8 an a third miles. That is less than inadequate. That is an insulting joke.

• there is no federal law allowing for racial profiling and arresting people because they look “illegal,”

• A cost-sharing relationship with state governments already is in place - known as Operation Stone Garden - to reimburse them for the border-enforcement efforts in which they engage.

• The reason for these exceptions was that such parents did not owe this country "direct and immediate allegiance."
• "allegiance" and "ligeance."

• US citizens living abroad are required to file with the IRS. I don't believe the IRS goes after children born in the US of foreign students and who return to that foreign country to live out their lives. - John StGeorge on 2010-08-25

• My late father first migrated to the United States during the 1950s via the Bracero Program,
• my late mother originally came to this country during the 1960s,
• when it comes to Latino immigrants, they defame the family unit and attack brown children.
• scapegoating Latinos (both documented and undocumented)
• required police to stop anyone they suspected was here illegally - and that could mean all brown-skinned people.
• Didn't they learn basic manners, such as treating others with respect and dignity? I certainly learned those lessons from my parents.

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• When the Department first informed Arpaio that a probe was under way, back in March 2009, it sent a letter saying the investigation would focus on "alleged patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures." But now we learn that just six months before that, in September 2008, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, did its own investigation of Arpaio's office -- and gave it a clean bill of health.
• "The OI and DRO supervisors consider the conduct and performance of the MCSO ... officers to be professional and meeting the requirement of the MOA." Translated, that means officials from the Homeland Security Department's Office of Investigation (OI), along with officials from the Detention and Removal Operations office (DRO), concluded that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO), in its handling of illegal immigrants, acted in a professional manner and complied with a memorandum of agreement (MOA) under which the government gave them the authority to enforce federal law. That agreement included a ban on racial profiling.
• A tidbit of information contained in other government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act also suggests politics may be involved. Arpaio's lawyers found a March 11, 2009, e-mail, sent just after the Justice Department investigation was announced, from an ICE employee to John P. Torres, then the acting assistant secretary of ICE. "Did you see this?" the e-mail said, attaching a news report on the investigation. "Yes," Torres responded a few minutes later. "Interesting politics at play."

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• Illegal immigrants are not subject to US jurisdiction, in the sense that they cannot be drafted into the US military or tried for treason against the US,
• Their children would share that status, via citizenship in their parents’ nation or nations of birth – and so would not be eligible for a US passport, even if born on US soil,

• Perhaps the defining Supreme Court ruling in this area is US v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 case in which justices upheld the US citizenship of a child born on US soil to Chinese immigrant parents. The parents were in the US legally, however.

  “The courts apparently have never ruled on the specific [issue] of whether the native-born child of illegal aliens as opposed to the child of lawfully present aliens may be a US citizen,” concludes a 2005 Congressional Research Service report on birthright citizenship.

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• people booked by local law enforcement agencies
• the fingerprints of everyone arrested by local police are now sent automatically to an electronic database reviewed by ICE,
• "I oppose it because it forces local police to carry out the work, which is really the work of federal government," said Jose Calderon, professor of sociology at Pitzer College in Claremont.
• Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill Feb. 18 that would force California to reconsider the language of its agreement with ICE. Ammiano wants cities and counties to be able to opt in or opt out, and also wants more statewide protections preventing domestic violence victims and other vulnerable immigrants from being taken into federal custody.

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