The federal civil trial of Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio began last week. The historic American nation stands beside him in the dock.
Arpaio is charged with “racially profiling” Hispanics and thereby violating their civil rights:
The class-action lawsuit was brought on behalf of all Latinos [N.S.: i.e. including illegal aliens!] who, since January 2007, have been stopped, detained, questioned or searched by the sheriff office’s agents in Maricopa County. [District Court Judge G. Murray Snow] in December ordered the office not to detain people based only on reasonable belief or knowledge they are illegal aliens.
“While MCSO officers can, of course, continue to investigate federal and state criminal law, including immigration-related criminal law, to stop people pursuant to such law, officers must have reasonable suspicion that the person is violating that law,” Snow said in his Dec. 23 decision.
[Arizona Judge Told Sheriff to Blame for Latinos’ Abuse by Edvard Pettersson, Bloomberg Business Week, July 19, 2012.]
Needless to say, Judge Snow, a Dubya appointee, should have summarily dismissed this lawsuit. It holds law enforcement to an impossibly high ideal. And a victory for the plaintiffs would obviously make it impossible for law enforcement officer to do their jobs, where Hispanics—illegals and legals alike—are concerned. The plaintiffs seek to have all immigration laws de facto voided in Maricopa County, where Hispanics are concerned, and a federal takeover of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
But it looks like the plaintiffs found the right judge.
And once this trial is finished, the Justice Department will commence with its own blatantly political “Civil Rights” trial.
The class action suit was not dismissed for two very bad reasons:
Politics is about interests, institutions, and sometimes even principles. But promoting any of these presupposes will. Without public officials like Sheriff Arpaio, who are ready to fight for the rule of law and Americans’ interests, our ruling elites will simply “disappear” U.S. immigration law—and with it, America.
The Bloomberg story reported: “Being in the U.S. without proper authorization is a civil violation and isn’t in itself a crime, the judge said.”
Reading Judge Snow’s weaselly argument that being an illegal alien is not a crime, I am reminded of the late Congressman Sonny Bono’s answer in a debate with Senate primary opponents Bruce Herschensohn and Tom Campbell, “[W]hen something is illegal, it's illegal” [Bono Jumps Into GOP Candidates Debate, by Bill Stall And Tracy Wilkinson, LA Times, February 01, 1992]
Judge Snow is seeking to define the legal concept “illegal alien” out of existence. But being illegally present in the U.S. is a deportable offense.
And look at this, from one of the 1940 laws:
(e) Personal possession of registration or receipt card; penalties
Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d) of this section. Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.
[8 USC § 1304 - Forms for Registration and Fingerprinting, U.S. Code, Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.]
Every illegal alien would, by definition, lack a duly issued, federal “certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card.”
Apparently this will come as a shock to Judge Snow, but according to federal law, any cop in the country can stop any person based merely on his suspicion that the person is in the country illegally—including a suspicion triggered by “ethnic profiling” i.e. the application of common sense—and demand that the latter prove that he is in the country legally.
The reason cops don’t stop people based on their looking Hispanic, speaking Spanish, congregating in areas known for high concentrations of illegals, sporting illegal alien gang tattoos, etc., and demand that they prove that they are in the country legally: “sanctuary” policies around the country that handcuff law enforcement from doing its job.
These sanctuary policies, themselves illegal, are based on the premise identified by Michelle Malkin in her book Invasion: “It ain’t over ‘til the alien wins.”
The most notorious such sanctuary policy, Los Angeles’ Special Order 40, is so blatantly motivated by a Reconquista agenda that the LAPD doesn’t even follow the narrow path of enforcement that the Order permits. The LAPD merely uses SO 40 as a pretext for not enforcing the law where apparent illegals are concerned.
When Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed the state’s illegal immigration bill, SB1070, into law in 2010, opponents of the bill misrepresented it in manifold ways, including calling it “unconstitutional,” and asserting that it would permit racial and ethnic profiling. Kris Kobach, the law professor who helped draft the bill, wrote one of the few Main Stream Media articles debunking the misrepresentations—published, of all places, in the Open Borders New York Times (! ) One such misrepresentation:
“It is unfair to demand that aliens carry their documents with them. It is true that the Arizona law makes it a misdemeanor for an alien to fail to carry certain documents. “Now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers ... you’re going to be harassed,” the president said. “That’s not the right way to go.” But since 1940, it has been a federal crime for aliens to fail to keep such registration documents with them. The Arizona law simply adds a state penalty to what was already a federal crime. Moreover, as anyone who has traveled abroad knows, other nations have similar documentation requirements.”
[Why Arizona Drew a Line by Kris W. Kobach, New York Times, April 28, 2010.]
Arpaio rebuts the charge that he racially profiled Hispanics by pointing out that the illegal aliens in Maricopa County are Hispanics. But his enemies see this as an admission of guilt.
The plaintiffs’ early moves have included presenting into evidence letters that some of Arpaio’s American citizen constituents have sent him, complaining about people they consider to be illegal aliens.
In one letter to the sheriff, a writer described dark skin as ‘the look of Mexican illegals,’ urging the sheriff to go to a particular street corner on the northern edge of this city and ‘round them all up.’ Another complained about people speaking Spanish at a fast-food restaurant in Sun City, northwest of here. Yet another grumbled about day laborers gathered at a spot in nearby Mesa, asking when officers would check to see if they were there ‘under legitimate circumstances.’
[Arizona Sheriff’s Trial Begins with Focus on Complaints About Illegal Immigrants by Fernanda Santos, New York Times, July 19, 2012.]
What on earth do such letters have to do with Sheriff Arpaio? Is he on trial—or are Maricopa County’s American citizens?
The answer: in the eyes of the Treason Lobby, both are. That such irrelevant material would be entered into evidence reveals nothing about Arpaio—but much about the plaintiffs, and their Open Borders/Reconquista allies.
The illegal alien invasion is consciously racial. The invaders and their Treason Lobby supporters promiscuously race-bait any white Americans who object to having their nation stolen from them. And public discourse has been so perverted by MSM that utterances that once would have been perfectly acceptable have placed beyond the pale.
This charge of “racial profiling” is consistent with the way that “Civil Rights” rhetoric and practices have been used for the past 48 or so years—as a way to handcuff law enforcement, grant illegal privileges to certain groups, and tyrannize the historic American people.
The only way Arpaio could “prove” that he isn’t a “racist” would be to refuse to enforce the law where Hispanics are concerned, and instead target innocent whites for harassment.
It’s bad enough when groups like the ACLU, MALDEF, and the Center for American Progress distort the law. It is intolerable when a federal jurist like U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow does.
This is why we must exercise the impeachment option to discipline rogue judges. The possibility of being impeached may not focus the mind quite like the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight. But it would still be a vast improvement over the present situation.
After all, leftist threats of impeachment seem to have scared Chief Justice Roberts into approving Obamacare, didn’t they?
Meanwhile, we must support immigration patriots like Sheriff Arpaio. Not simply because he’s one of us—but because he’s right.
And that’s what we do here at VDARE.com: Speak for hundreds of millions of patriotic Americans who have been forced to live in the shadows in their own country.
Nicholas Stix [email him] is a New York City-based journalist and researcher, much of whose work focuses on the nexus of race, crime, and education. He spent much of the 1990s teaching college in New York and New Jersey. His work has appeared in Chronicles, The New York Post, Weekly Standard, Daily News, New York Newsday, American Renaissance, Academic Questions, Ideas on Liberty and many other publications. Stix was the project director and principal author of the NPI report, The State of White America-2007. He blogs at Nicholas Stix, Uncensored.
