Immigration law

[Risquevania]

The uproar is not targeted at the whole thing, but this part:

Officers have to interrogate everybody who looks like an illegal immigrant. Or anyone could sue him or her of not doing their job.

In short, this is a new version of "pull off every car with American-American in it, cus they all look suspicious".

Some police stations are against it because it puts them into a lose-lose situation. If you interrogate someone who looks "illegal", the victim can sue the police for "racial profiling". Now if the officer don't use racial profile, they will be sued for not doing their job.

It's not like some of the right-wing media described, "they wanna open the border". Nobody said let the illegals get in, but this part of the law put police in a really bad position.

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by Risquevania

The uproar is not targeted at the whole thing, but this part:

Officers have to interrogate everybody who looks like an illegal immigrant. Or anyone could sue him or her of not doing their job.

That's not what the law says. The law only allows police to ask about immigration status in the normal course of “lawful contact” with a person, such as a traffic stop or if they have committed a crime.

Before asking a person about immigration status, law enforcement officials are required by the law to have “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal immigrant. The concept of “reasonable suspicion” is well established by court rulings. Since Arizona does not issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, having a valid license creates a presumption of legal status. Examples of reasonable suspicion include:

* A driver stopped for a traffic violation has no license, or record of a driver’s license or other form of federal or state identification.
* A police officer observes someone buying fraudulent identity documents or crossing the border illegally.
* A police officer recognizes a gang member back on the street who he knows has been previously deported by the federal government.


Yeah, I know... There I go again bringing facts into the debate.