In San Jose The Cops Patrol With La Migra In Tow
Here’s a new twist on an old story: Police in San Jose, CA, will have an immigration officer with them when they cruise the streets.
That’s what the Associated Press reports.
Immigrant rights advocates are criticizing a new policing strategy in San Jose that deploys federal immigration agents with the city’s police department.
Advocates met with police Chief Chris Moore and federal officials on Tuesday about the use of the two immigration agents.
Federal officials say they will focus on arresting and deporting violent gang members who are also illegal immigrants.
Technically, it’s only two immigration officers for the entire city, but all you need to generate a chill among immigrants is the knowledge of one. An immigrant is taking a chance, when she calls the cops, that the police cruiser will show up with an immigration officer in tow. That, or may be the cop is in cahoots with la migra (this second scenario implies a huge mistrust of anything official or governmental).
A group of immigration advocates in San Jose, Silicon Valley DeBug, says that under these circumstances immigrants who witness crimes or are victims of crimes will be reluctant to report them. So it becomes a matter of public safety. The irony is that the idea to have immigration officers ride with the police came as a response to public a safety issue in the first place; it was seen as a way to crack down on gang activity and deport the gang members that are here without documents. The problem is what happens in the crack down’s wake.
There’s more.
This is, inadvertently or not, a watered-down version of some of the most stringent anti-immigrant legislation we’ve seen. Technically, the police will not have the authority to detain anyone on suspicion of being in the country without the proper documents, so it removes that burden from the cops, and it eliminates, in practice, the suspicion of racial profiling. I’m sure the immigration officer will have little motivation to leave the shotgun seat in the cruiser if the guy stopped for speeding is an internet company executive driving an expensive sports car.
But the opposite holds true as well. What if the guy stopped for speeding is the executive’s gardener, a U.S. citizens in an old pick-up? You think he won’t be asked for his papers? And what if he has nothing beyond a driver’s license and proof of insurance? Will he be hauled to an immigration detention place until someone takes him his birth certificate?
My daughter tutored Latino elementary and middle school kids in San Jose every weekend for the past four years. She’d drive around town to pick them up at their homes in the morning then drop them off in the afternoon. What if she were stopped and detained because some of her kids were undocumented? Would she have been charged with transporting undocumented children? You see how murky this thing is?
The problem with these immigration enforcement schemes is that they are thought-up by folks who will never be directly affected by them. And the truth is that most people are concerned with civil rights only when their own are violated. So the law is okay as long as they’re okay.
If we bring it up on News Taco it’s because any civil rights violation is not okay; and the threat of a possible violation, if it comes to our attention, is enough to make us, at the very least, raise a flag.
Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda
[Photo by davidsonscott15]
