Burning Atlanta

Tee-Hee. My thanks to D.A. King for this one.

Fishing without a permit in Hall County, Ga. may get an illegal deported.

Bortolo Ruiz was fishing with four other Mexican day laborers at Wahoo Creek April 5 when a state Department of Natural Resources Ranger asked the men for their fishing licenses.

When they could provide neither a fishing license nor valid identification, DNR Cpl. Adam Loudermilk arrested the men and took them to the Hall County jail, where it was soon determined they were in the United States illegally. Under a new local-federal initiative known as 287(g), jailers processed the men to be turned over to immigration officials for deportation proceedings.

Within two weeks of their arrest, after pleading no contest in state court to misdemeanor fishing without a license and receiving a suspended sentence of the four days they already served in jail, Ruiz, 29, and his fellow fishermen were picked up by officials with Immigration and Customs and Enforcement, on a fast track for the immigration courts and, very likely, a trip back to Mexico. Excellent. Too often we've seen stories where ICE won't pick up illegals unless they're involved in something more serious.

Local attorney Arturo Corso said he believes there is a right way to enforce immigration laws, by targeting serious drug-related offenses and violent crimes that cause community concerns, and that too many working immigrants are being caught up in the 287(g) web since it was implemented three weeks ago. "Working immigrants?" Ah, does he mean illegal aliens?

"There’s no way five people fishing in the middle of the day would cause anybody alarm or concern," Corso said. NOT the point.

Attorney Joe Diaz, who represented three of the fishermen, said in 16 years as an attorney he had never seen someone jailed for fishing without a license.

"Certainly no white folks," Diaz said. "It just feeds into the idea that now the Hispanic community is under attack. It doesn’t make any sense." It makes PERFECT sense, read below.

Georgia DNR spokeswoman Jennifer Barnes said the arrests were "not an uncommon occurrence." A DNR officer has the option of issuing a warning, writing a citation or arresting an offender on a fishing license violation charge, she said.

"What likely happened was the violators were unable to provide a proper identification for the officer," Barnes said.

She said that without identification, a violator may never show up for a summons or pay the ticket. EXACTLY. If I get pulled for some minor traffic infraction and don't have a license, and that officer can't verify who I am, then I would probably go to jail. What good does it do to write a ticket to someone and not know who they really are and where they live?

"We’re not judges and it’s not our place to be judges," Cronic said. "When you do that, it’s a slippery slope you go down. It’s not something that should be determined at our level."

Cronic said his agency is modeling its policies on the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office, the first agency in Georgia to implement 287(g), by equally applying the deportation process to all arrestees.

"As law enforcement officers, it’s not our place to decide" who gets deported and who doesn’t, Cronic said. "Due process in the courts will decide that. The way not to get caught up in the program is don’t break the law while you’re here illegally." EXACTLY correct. It's up to ICE to determine who gets tossed.

Critics say the initiative has already fostered a climate of fear and apprehension of law enforcement in the local Hispanic community.

"It’s tragic that we have an ethnicity of people in this day and age that live in fear of their government," Corso said. "Live in fear of THEIR government?" If they're illegals then this isn't their government. And if they don't want to live in fear they can LEAVE.