Just this past year a controversial law SB1070 was signed by Arizona’s governor, were local police have the power to stop anyone on reasonable suspicion that is an illegal immigrant. They have the right to arrest them if they don’t have any documentation such as a driver’s license, work permit, or resident card that shows legal status. The biggest objection of this law is racial profiling and how police can just arrest anyone by race or culture. Arizona population for Illegal’s is an estimate amount of a half a million people. The estimate of people could have been around for years since youth or with in the
Unlawful War The battle over immigration in the United States has been going on for years; today the big issue is illegal Latinos living in our country. Many laws have been passed to control the increasing number of illegal aliens that are entering our country, but all have failed to eliminate the problem. Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona, passed a law allowing law enforcement officers to arrest any immigrant with “reasonable suspicion” of being in the country illegally. The law known as Senate Bill 1070 or SB 1070 for short has caused an uproar throughout the nation. Not only will the law condone racial profiling, raise constitutional issues, and political problems, but it sets the stage for other states with immigration problems to follow.
The FBI’s top criminal priority is public corruption. This corruption involves the corruption of state, local, and federally elected, appointed or contracted officials. With these officials in office, any corruption in these offices could impact the security of our neighborhoods, all they to how secure our borders are. The government protects 7,000 miles of United States land border and 95,000 miles of shoreline. The fact that more than one million visitors enter the U.S through 1 of 327 official ports of entry not including Mexico shows that any corruption could allow a significant threat to enter this country.
Implementing laws to reduce the number of immigrants entering the United States illegally that lead to racial profiling has caused many controversial issues and arguments among people. For example, on April 23,2010 Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer, signed S.B. 1070 into law. That would prevent some immigrants from entering the country illegally. The law requires Arizona police officers to question any one they reasonably suspect of being an illegal alien.
On the Pine Ridge Reservation on June 26, 1975 a shoot-out resulting in the death of two FBI agents was soon to be the responsibility of Leonard Peltier, a well know organization leader of the American Indian Movement. People from Pine Ridge, South Dakota asked Peltier along with other AIM members to camp out on the ranch to protect them form violence. The two FBI agents followed a pickup truck onto jumping bull’s ranch. Instantly families became alarmed and thought they were being attacked. When shots were fired the AIM members shot back to protect the people.
In the past four years, over 34,000 people have been murdered, during their new president’s war on drugs. Both Mexican and American officials say the two countries have never worked closer in fighting crime, are facing growing pressure to prove that their strategy is working, but, as stated before the problem is still spilling over the border and is becoming a source of mounting concern in our states in our Southwestern region. There has even been some evidence found, that bounties have been placed on the heads of agents in the United States Border Patrol. The Department of Homeland Security has issued, a warning to law enforcement officers in west Texas, due to retaliatory killings by Mexican gangs. The agency has even suggested that agents’ change their routes and wear body armor while on duty.
Isn’t the federal law in charge of immigration? Why must our local officials then deal with immigration issues? We are creating a vicious circle of hate, what guarantees the citizens that police officials will not violate or take advantage of the power that they have been given? This new law is “giving police officers a green light to harass anyone who looks or sounds foreign” explained Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. The question again arises, how will the officer detect these illegal immigrants?
Legal residents of Arizona are granted the option to sue if they feel a local agency’s policies interfere with the enforcement of federal immigration law. It makes it a criminal offense if an individual picking up a day laborer interferes with the normal flow of traffic. The law does not allow an undocumented immigrant to search for work in any public place. These are merely a select handful of issues within SB 1070. Once this law was announced, there was an enormous public outcry of opposition.
All the law is saying that law enforcements can ask for national ID and see if that person is here illegally by checking out the immigration status of the person. By having this law repelled it will just opens a door to human smuggling and once they’re in America, most likely no one will know that they are illegal, unless they get arrested. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of the Maricopa County in Arizona says his office in the last three years has investigated, arrested, detained in our jails over 38,000 illegal aliens with very few lawsuits. He says one night, when there was a lot of commotion, going on outside of house and office, sent out 200 deputy sheriffs and volunteer posse and within 12 hours arrested 93 people, around 65 were illegal aliens involved in human smuggling. By having this law we can easily catch illegal aliens who came into America without being processed.
Lawsuits citing First Amendment rights of panhandlers have caused many communities to abandon their pursuit. A recent legal battle with the American Civil Liberties Union cost the city of Boise, Idaho forty-five thousand dollars in reimbursement of plaintiff legal fees (Berg, 2014). Arlington Municipal Code should direct its restrictions to other venues. Rather than attempting to prevent panhandlers from begging on highway exit ramps, an ordinance should be drafted focusing on less-controversial elements of panhandling. For example, an ordinance requiring motorist to pull out of the lane of traffic and legally park their vehicle prior to engaging activity with a pedestrian would have a direct impact on panhandling without inciting constitutional issues.