Burning Atlanta

Thank you, Oklahoma. Thank you, Sheriff Glanz. You're not just helping your state, you're helping the whole nation.

Okies got some guts.

The Tulsa County sheriff's office is the only law enforcement agency in the state to have officers trained to enforce federal immigration laws. It has detained and helped to deport more than 1,000 illegal immigrants since July.

The Greater Tulsa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce estimates that between 15,000 and 25,000 Hispanic immigrants have left the city in the last few months. Hispanic religious leaders there say they have seen their congregations reduced roughly by half.

"Some people think it's a federal issue, but so is robbing a bank. You just don't ignore it when you see it happening, if you are law enforcement,” said Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz, who has 30 officers dually trained in enforcing federal immigration law. Since July, when training was completed, his department has been delivering an average of 85 illegal immigrants per month to the Department of Homeland Security for deportation.

Arrests made by Tulsa County Sheriff's deputies have resulted in a decline in the jail population of about seven percent, or 100 inmates. Glanz says federal immigration law gives him an additional tool to get undesirables off the street. EXCELLENT. Fewer inmates, less costs.

"I don't think they understand the implications on the community of having a strong underbelly of illegal aliens. They end up working a lot of domestic violence cases, a lot of drug cases and shootings they wouldn't have to if they would just enforce immigration laws,” Glanz said. "When you have a bunch of illegals in a community, it spawns other types of criminal activity; it helps create an environment where that criminality can exist.”  EXACTLY CORRECT. Just like the murders at the apartment on Shallowford Road, in Atlanta. ILLEGALS running an illegal store out of their apartment were targeted by robbers, who shot and killed two of them. AND, chances are, the offenders are also illegals. AND that apartment store had been robbed several times before.

One recent driving under the influence stop got Enrique Martinez-Mejia, a convicted sex offender from California, off the street. Mejia was originally booked under the name Salvador Sanchez-Espinoza, because he presented deputies with fraudulent documents to that effect. Mejia had tattooed dates for 10 of the last 14 years of his life, spent in prison in Chino, Calif. He has been deported from the United States, Glanz said.

Another recent arrest was of two alleged rapists in Tulsa, Glanz said. Deputies say Pedro and Rosalio Morin were using an 11-year-old girl as a sex slave. The young girl and her mother also were illegal immigrants.

The sheriff's department is working to help them get legal status to remain in this country, at least for the duration of the legal proceeding against the girl's assailants.

Three years ago, Tulsa Sheriff's deputies uncovered an alleged human trafficking operation during a traffic stop.

There were two people sitting in the front of the van and 15 illegal immigrants — including two young girls — crammed in the back. The van was en route to Chicago. When the deputies contacted immigration authorities, they were told to let them go, Glanz said.

"Those two girls probably ended up in prostitution, and there's no telling how much money those two drivers made in trafficking human beings into this country,” Glanz said. "That's why I started trying to get this program together.”

Hispanic advocates have criticized Glanz's department for causing widespread panic and say his actions are tantamount to racial profiling.

Cynthia Hess, an adjunct immigration law professor at Tulsa University, pointed to one man who was detained by the sheriff's department for weeks. It was later discovered he had a green card. She says unless the department is making the same inquiries of everyone it stops, she does not understand how they can justify policing strategies.

"There's no question that it is racial profiling,” Hess said.  Gee, where have I heard that BULLSHIT about a million times before?