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.