Burning Atlanta

I adamantly oppose any kind of racial profiling. The sad reality is that a guy that's Hispanic, who gets pulled over for some traffic infraction, may blame it on being ethnically targeted and nothing will change his mind. If he perceives it as racist then racist it is. There's very little that can be done to overcome a perception. All that can be done is to fight it with reality/facts. More on that in a second.

Yawn.

Seven months after the state attorney general, Anne Milgram, ordered local police departments in New Jersey to question people they arrest for certain crimes about their immigration status and to report illegal immigrants to federal authorities, the rate of such referrals has nearly doubled.

But immigrants and their advocates say that some people have been unfairly swept up in the dragnet because of overzealous enforcement or confusion over how Ms. Milgram’s directive was supposed to be implemented, creating a chilling effect on some immigrants’ relationships with the police. Heard that fear mongering a million times.

“This is imposing an incredible human cost on these immigrants,” said Maria Juega of the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “They fear contact with authority. Any remote or direct link with the government is now a risk for an immigrant.” Bogus bullshit. We're not talking about "immigrants" we're talking about illegal aliens.

In an interview, Ms. Milgram said the directive had helped keep serious criminals in prison, as federal immigration authorities detained those who had “murdered people, who stabbed people, who were arrested for D.W.I. or who molested kids,” but who might otherwise have been released on bail, on parole or at the end of their sentences. Which is exactly why every jail should screen for illegals.

The police said that Mr. Salazar, a janitor who does not speak English, presented a fake driver’s license and was arrested.

The police chief in West Deptford, Craig J. Mangano, said that one of his best officers had made the arrest and had the right to ask about immigration status. But an uncle of Mr. Salazar’s, Francisco Escobar, 45, who has a green card and works as a cook at a steak house, said, “I feel like the police are chasing illegals.”

He added: “My nephew didn’t drink. He didn’t get into trouble. He just worked.”

And now it looks as though Mr. Salazar could be deported. Too damned bad. If you're an illegal you are subject to arrest and deportation at any time. You can fight a deportation and ask for a hearing, etc.. but if you lose it's worse than simply accepting a voluntary removal.

The rest of Mr. Escobar’s account raised the possibility that some officers either do not understand or are ignoring the language of the directive. When his nephew called him after being arrested, Mr. Escobar said, he went to the police station and spoke to an officer, whose name he does not remember.

“The officer asked whether I was legal,” Mr. Escobar said. “Where I lived. Where I lived before. And how long I had lived at my present address.”

After he had waited at the police station for two hours, Mr. Escobar said, the officer told him that Mr. Salazar, who had given false identification, would have to stay at the station. (He said he later charged nearly $11,000 on a credit card to bail Mr. Salazar out of jail.) Chief Mangano said his officers had probably asked for identification to make sure Mr. Escobar was who he said he was. Is that SOP? Do they commonly ask those questions? If not, they should, regardless of anyone's ethnicity.

The South Harrison police chief, Warren Mabey, said the officer thought Aurelio was another man with the same name who had several outstanding warrants. The chief said the arrest had nothing to do with racial profiling: On the same day, the same officer pulled over 10 other drivers, including seven white men, a white woman, and two other men, one Hispanic and one black. “If our intent was to pull over every Hispanic with a Pennsylvania license plate,” Chief Mabey said, “we’d do it all day.” This is how you fight against the typical "racial profiling" bullshit. They kept records.