News From the Border

Providing the news from a different front but from a war that we must win as well! I recognize the poverty and desperate conditions that many Latinos live in. We, as the USA, have a responsibility to do as much as we can to reach out to aid and assist spiritually with the Gospel and naturally with training, technology and resources. But poverty gives no one the right to break the laws of another sovereign nation.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Navarrette: Asking suspect's status isn't a crime

RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.

Published: 03.12.2008

You can't please everyone. But when it comes to immigration reform, you're not on the right track until you're not pleasing anyone.

The Phoenix Police Department has adopted a new immigration enforcement policy that is taking torpedoes from those who think it goes too far and from those who insist it doesn't go far enough.

The policy change, recommended by a panel of former government prosecutors and implemented by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, allows officers to question anyone suspected of a crime about their immigration status and gives officers the discretion about whether to notify federal immigration officials.

But it prohibits officers from posing such questions to crime victims, witnesses or anyone stopped for civil violations such as speeding.

Immigrant-rights activists, Latino lawyer associations and civil libertarians condemn the policy change, calling it a sop to xenophobia.

The Phoenix police union denounces the new policy as "smoke and mirrors." It wants officers to be able to make judgments about who is in the country illegally - using the standard of "reasonable suspicion," a lower threshold employed by immigration authorities.

So who is right and who is wrong? That's easy. The city is right and the critics are wrong.

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