🚀 go-pugleaf

Whitey Loughmiller wrote:
>   MSNBC.com
> States, counties cracking down on illegals
> Traffic stops can lead to deportation; some Latinos cry foul
>
> By Peter Whoriskey
> The Washington Post
> Updated: 11:42 p.m. ET Sept. 26, 2006
>
> CHARLOTTE - Police here operated for years under what amounts to a
> "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward illegal immigrants.
> As elsewhere in the United States, law enforcement officers did not
> check the immigration status of people they came into contact with, and
> in the vast majority of cases, a run-in with the law carried little
> threat of deportation.
>
> But that accommodation for the burgeoning illegal population ended
> abruptly in April, when the Mecklenburg County sheriff's office began to
> enforce immigration law, placing more than 100 people a month into
> deportation proceedings. Some of them had been charged with violent
> crimes, others with traffic infractions.
>
> The program takes one of the most aggressive stances in the United
> States toward illegal immigrants, and officials in scores of
> communities, including Herndon and Loudoun County, are considering
> adopting their own version. The House earlier this month was weighing a
> measure "reaffirming" the authority of local law enforcement agencies to
> arrest people on suspicion of violating immigration laws.
>
> Some Latino leaders say the program here is contributing to a
> discriminatory climate in which Hispanic drivers feel as if they are
> being "hunted" by police. And some law enforcement agencies elsewhere
> have rejected that enforcement function, saying such programs would
> rupture any trust that agencies have developed in Latino neighborhoods.
>
> But advocates see it as a way to catch illegal immigrants who slip
> through the porous federal enforcement measures but run afoul of state
> or local police.
>
> Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph says there should be little
> sympathy for illegal immigrants caught by his program: They have already
> broken the law once by being here illegally, and then been arrested on
> suspicion of another crime.
>
> "When any of them cross that border without proper documentation,
> they've violated the law -- however insignificant it may seem to some
> people," he said. "I've heard sad stories about folks wanting to come up
> here and have a better life and earn money for their family. I've
> arrested bank robbers who've had the same excuse."
>
> ‘Very tense’
> While the program has led to the removal of many illegal immigrants
> charged with felonies, people arrested for lesser charges such as
> traffic violations are also subject to deportation.
>
> That, according to Hispanic leaders, has created a constant worry for
> people who are in the United States illegally and now fear deportation
> after a simple traffic stop.
>
> Many illegal immigrants lack valid licenses. As a result, they now risk
> not only arrest but also deportation whenever they drive.
>
> "It's tense, very tense," said Angeles Ortega-Moore, director of the
> Latin American Coalition in Charlotte. "It used to be everybody here
> loved the Latinos. They would say, 'We like you more than the blacks.'
> Now we're like the Big Bad Wolf."
>
> "The law enforcement community is split on this issue," said Gene
> Voegtlin, legislative counsel for the International Association of
> Chiefs of Police. The local agencies against enforcing immigration law
> "are concerned about the chilling effect it will have on immigrants'
> cooperation with law enforcement," he said.
>
> In Mecklenburg County, about 1,200 foreign-born people have been
> arrested since April, on charges ranging from traffic violations and
> trespassing to sex crimes, and nearly 600 have been found to be here
> illegally.
>
> Among those snared earlier this month was Guadalupe Lara, an 18-year-old
> Mexican carpenter.
>
> The fifth of eight children born to farmworkers in Queretaro, he walked
> across the border when he was 16 to find work. Two years later, he has
> only a wispy beard and stands 5-foot-3.
>
> He makes $7.50 an hour and lives with four others in a small, sparsely
> furnished apartment. Though they lack beds, they have a television on
> which Lara watches his favorite telenovela, "Heridas de Amor." He sends
> money home monthly and calls home every week.
>
> "It's difficult," he said in Spanish. "When I call they say 'How are
> you?' I say 'I am fine.' " On Monday night, Lara was pulled over by
> police after buying a pack of cigarettes. He was not drunk but had an
> open bottle of beer in the car.
>
> He also lacked a license. He was arrested and when asked admitted he had
> no papers.
> Had he been detained elsewhere, that he was an illegal immigrant might
> not have mattered.
> But in Mecklenburg, two sergeants and 10 deputies at the jail are
> trained to handle immigration infractions, running checks in databases
> and holding people in custody if necessary.
>
> Some of those arrested face immediate deportation. Some are held on bond
> pending an immigration hearing. Lara was relatively lucky. Because he
> had no prior immigration or criminal charges, he was given a notice to
> appear before an immigration judge in Atlanta and released. He is likely
> to be ordered deported.
>
> Lara says police now unfairly target Latinos. More than 90 percent of
> those discovered to be illegally in Mecklenburg are from Latin America.
>
> "The police are just looking for problems with Hispanics," Lara said.
> "They know we don't have driver's licenses -- we can't get them -- and
> so they pull us over."
>
> "A lot of people here are very afraid because they think the police will
> pull them over for anything," said Liliana "La Chula" Ramos, a host on
> local Spanish radio. "It's very difficult for people to get licenses
> now, and people have to go to work, so they're out there driving."
>
> Philip Turtletaub, a Charlotte immigration lawyer, says he sometimes
> receives six or seven calls a day from relatives of illegal immigrants
> caught by the program. He tells them not to waste their money.
>
> "Most people I can't do anything for," he said.
> ‘Putting the pressure on these people’
> While he ventured no opinion on the program's fairness, he said he
> thinks it could make life as an illegal immigrant in the region so
> uncomfortable that fewer illegal immigrants would choose to live there.
>
> "They're putting the pressure on these people. They're scaring them.
> People say we can't deport 10 million. But you don't have to. If you
> deport enough of them, others will go back voluntarily because they
> don't want to live in these conditions."
>
> Besides Mecklenburg, six other state and local law enforcement agencies
> have started similar programs in recent years. A dozen more are being
> worked out with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And in the
> past three months, hundreds of state and local departments have inquired
> about similar efforts, said Robert J. Hines, who heads the program for
> the ICE.
>
> "When you are removing the criminal element from the community, it's
> hard to point a finger and say it's a bad thing," Hines said.
>
> Loudoun County Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson said his department is
> considering participating. Last night, Herndon Police Chief Toussaint E.
> Summers Jr. was expected to ask Town Council permission to apply for
> such a program.
> Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax and Prince William officials said they
> are not considering the idea, and police officials in suburban Maryland
> say there is lukewarm interest in deputizing officers to enforce
> immigration laws.
>
> "In the Montgomery County area, we've taken more the track that we
> celebrate diversity," said Gaithersburg Police Chief Mary Ann Viverette,
> who is also the president of the International Association of Chiefs of
> Police. Immigration is "not an issue we want to enforce."
>
> In federal testimony from August, Pendergraph, the Mecklenburg County
> sheriff, said "political correctness" is preventing some communities
> from adopting the program, and that "will eventually be the downfall of
> this country if someone doesn't wake up."
>
> Influx of Latinos
>
> Like much of the mid-Atlantic region, Charlotte has seen a rapid rise in
> the number of Latino immigrants over the past 15 years, many of them
> here illegally. Between 2000 and 2005, the estimated number of illegal
> immigrants in North Carolina rose 38 percent, from 260,000 to 360,000,
> according to a Department of Homeland Security report.
> The influx, particularly conspicuous in a metropolis clinging to its
> small-town past, has caused ripples of concern.
>
> "Texas, New York and California might be used to large influxes of
> illegal immigrants -- but we're not," said Mecklenburg County
> Commissioner Bill James, who favors stronger enforcement. "James
> Carville had it right: We're just Mayberry with a major airport."
>
> Local support for broad enforcement coalesced in July 2005 after a truck
> driven by an illegal immigrant whose blood-alcohol level was nearly
> triple the legal limit, hit a car, killing a local teacher and leaving
> the teacher's wife in a vegetative state. The accident resulted in
> Ramiro Gallegos's fifth impaired-driving charge in five years -- and led
> to the new enforcement policy.
>
> "No more excuses," U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick said at a news conference at the
> time, calling for tougher enforcement. "You're drunk. You're driving.
> You're illegal. You're deported. Period."
> Staff writers Bill Turque, Karin Brulliard, Ernesto Londoño and
> Candace Rondeaux contributed to this report.
>
> © 2006 The Washington Post Company
> URL:
>
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15022093/page/2/
> © 2006 MSNBC.com
>
> "It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate , tireless
> minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men. " --
> Samuel Adams
>
> " George W. Bush is so pro-Mexico that if you hit him with a stick
> prizes would fall out of him. "
>
> --Argus Hamilton
>
> "If you worship your enemy, you are defeated.
>
> If you adopt your enemy's religion you are enslaved.
>
> If you breed with your enemy you are destroyed."
>
> -- Polydoros
>
> "Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice.
> It is not a thing to be waited for - it is a thing to be achieved . "
>
> -- William Jennings Bryan
>   
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Meantime, the Democrat whores in the US Senate are delaying progress on
a border fence building bill.

ted