This is one of those weeks when I love my job.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I love my job plenty, but when you get to talk to people day after day about an ongoing controversy that really includes very little middle ground, and has contending opponents and supporters offering two very different versions of the very same place, it just provides the kind of juicy challenge many reporters love.
This time, the challenge is explaining Arizona's Senate Bill, or SB 1070. The law basically gives local law enforcement throughout the state the job of enforcing federal immigration law inside Arizona. The law's text begins in pretty straightforward language, "No official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may adopt a policy that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law."
In other words, Arizona says, federal law regarding lawful presence in the United States cannot be treated as if it's something else by agencies of the government of this state. Our law is federal law, and we're going to enforce it. Members of the state legislature who gave the bill heavy majorities in the house and senate have said since the law's passage in the spring that it's really not a big deal: Arizona has been working alongside federal agencies to enforce immigration law for years... all the new law does is clear up some of the ambiguity by making illegal residence in that part of the US called Arizona a Class 1 Misdemeanor, trespassing.
The state's sizable Latino population, about 30 percent of the total, legally and illegally here in the United States, has said all along it's not so simple. Far from it. Leaders of civil rights organizations, many churches, immigration activists, and even some police officers have been saying for months that the law taking effect this week means nothing less than open season on Latinos in a state that's been becoming less and less hospitable over the years.
Without the law in effect, it's hard to know who's version of the truth is closer to the truth. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county is about the size of Connecticut and straddles Indian reservations and active corridors for smuggling people and drugs from Mexico, passionately insists the law can be enforced without racial profiling. All it will take is good training and police behavior that follows the guidelines set out in the law. Day laborer advocate Salvador Reza just as passionately insists that the police officers and sheriff's deputies of Arizona will not be wasting their time checking the status of blue-eyed Canadians. "This law," Reza told me, "is aimed at brown people."
Far from the hotels and office buildings clustered in downtown Phoenix, I attended a workshop on the new law. It was held in the yard of a modest house in a heavily immigrant neighborhood, as the sun was dipping behind the horizon and blast-furnace heat of a mid-summer day in the desert was giving way to something a little more bearable. A young immigration attorney told a crowd of men and women, young and old, that in the age of SB1070, they had to remember their right to remain silent.
"It doesn't matter if they keep asking you the same questions over and over again," he told the crowd in Spanish. "It doesn't matter if they detain you and keep questioning you for half an hour, or an hour. It is your right not to answer. You don't have to tell them where you were born, or your brother's name, or your mother's name, or your address. You just tell them your name, and you don't have to say anything else."
The idea is to force local law enforcement to turn any case of a suspected immigration violation into something that's tedious and time-consuming for local officers. Don't sign anything, the crowd was told. Don't tell anything to anybody except a federal judge.
At the other end of the continuum are SB1070's supporters who say the law is really necessary because the federal government hasn't lived up to the responsibilities the state has now insisted it can fulfill. Arizona, they say, is filling a vacuum left by government inaction. For the supporters of the bill, the rationale is simple, and straightforward:
a)Being in the country to live or to work requires legal status.
b)If you are out of status you are breaking the law.
c)Local agencies enforce laws.
d)So making being an illegal resident in Arizona a crime opens the door to enforcement of a federal law by local officers.
But how do you ascertain if someone is here in full compliance with the law? Do you stop them on the sidewalk? Do you watch them enter a home and then go in after them? Latinos in Arizona told me this week that the legal and constitutional niceties mean nothing: the police can find a way to interrogate them about immigration status if they want to. The key phrase is "reasonable suspicion." This is right from the text of SB1070: "For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person."
Police officers around the state have been watching training videos, instructing them in how to make these inquiries without crossing up racial profiling policies, at the same time as activists are schooling immigrants in strategies for how to deal with the police. The other day I criss-crossed the deserts of southern Arizona with a sheriff's deputy on patrol. When she saw a man driving erratically, she pulled him over. He was a Mexican citizen, and a legal resident of the United States. She knew he was legal immediately when he presented an Arizona driver's license. He was also drunk, and was brought in to a local station for processing.
Things got a little more interesting when the man's wife came by with a friend to pick up his car and drive it home. A quick check of the state's database showed the wife was not a licensed driver. Starting Thursday, when the new law takes effect, the deputy will be able to, will be required to, further pursue the woman's immigration status. The accused drunk driver's wife was lucky today... a stern warning about operating the vehicle without a license was all she suffered for getting her husband's car home.
Rep. John McComish, Republican Majority Leader of the Arizona House of Representatives, calmly and confidently told me the world will not change drastically once the law takes effect. "The sky will not fall, the ground will not shift underneath our feet." Rep. McComish supports the law, and thinks it is not a drastic change from what was already happening in Arizona. If anything, he says, he's surprised at how the law became such a big deal in the rest of the country. He is worried about the threats of boycotts to national organizations planning conventions in his state, pressure on Major League Baseball to pull next year's All-Star game from Phoenix, and promises from activists throughout the Southwest to stop spending money in Arizona.
Actors and athletes get a lot of attention when they take public stands on issues like immigration. It will be interesting to see if the state's merchants feel the more modest pain others promise to inflict. This week I looked on as Alma Mendoza, who came to the United States illegally as a teenager and now owns her own house-cleaning business, got her house ready for eight out of state visitors coming to protest. "They are staying with me because they don't want to spend any money in Arizona. So I'm getting beds ready for them."
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio plans to be ready for them too. He went on national news programs to promise outside protesters he's got plenty of room in makeshift jails for anyone who seeks to block traffic the day the law takes effect. Sheriff Joe, who likes the title, "America's Toughest Sheriff," won't be getting any help from Phoenix Police Officer David Salgado. Officer Salgado is suing to keep the law from taking effect Friday, saying he can't enforce it without resorting to racial profiling.
As we sat in his lawyer's office this week, with a stunning view of Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun stretching out behind him, Salgado said mournfully that the Phoenix PD had spent decades trying to build trust in the Latino community, and now, he was sure, it was all going to be thrown away in the interest of a law that can't be enforced. Stay tuned: critical days are coming, as federal Judge Susan Bolton decides whether to keep the law from going into effect or not. There are more chapters to play out in courtrooms, in the streets, and in the neighborhoods of Arizona.