Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Parts of AZ Law

MoonHowler

Getting the facts now…..Judge blocks police from determining immigration status.

Stay tuned. This post will be updated.

Key Portions Blocked:

*Officers to to check immigraton status
*Immigrants to carry legal papers at all times
*Undocumented worders not allowed to seek and perform work

Copy of Judge Bolton’s Ruling

From MSNBC:

PHOENIX — A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.

The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents — including sections that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws.

The judge also put on hold parts of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places. In addition, the judge blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants.

“Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked,” U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled.

She ruled that the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues. Other provisions of the law, many of them procedural and slight revisions to existing Arizona immigration statute, will go into effect at 12:01 a.m.

Reminder: This is a temporary injunction.

Vice Mayor of Phoenix Tells a Different Story

MoonHowler

Michael Nowakowski, vice mayor of Phoenix, paints a different picture of what is going on in Arizona. He also feels that sb 1070 is being used to parlay people’s fears into an election win for the current governor. He speaks of the crime rate being down in his state. He believes people being scared off and he is tired of the governor telling the nation that people are being beheaded in Arizona all as a political ploy.

Maybe the vice mayor isn’t running for re-election this cycle?   A ruling is expected today or tomorrow ruling whether the injunction to halt 1070  going in to effect is granted.

Man With Neo-Nazi Ties Leads Patrols in AZ

MoonHowler

From Huffington Post:

 

 

PHOENIX — Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents, and a tough new immigration law aren’t enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who’s now leading a militia in the Arizona desert.

Jason “J.T.” Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on “narco-terrorists” and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants. So far, he says his patrols have only found a few border crossers who were given water and handed over to the Border Patrol. Once, they also found a decaying body in a wash, and alerted authorities.

But local law enforcement are nervous given that Ready’s group is heavily armed and identifies with the National Socialist Movement, an organization that believes only non-Jewish, white heterosexuals should be American citizens and that everyone who isn’t white should leave the country “peacefully or by force.”

“We’re not going to sit around and wait for the government anymore,” Ready said. “This is what our founding fathers did.”

An escalation of civilian border watches have taken root in Arizona in recent years, including the Minutemen movement. Various groups patrol the desert on foot, horseback and in airplanes and report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol, and generally, they have not caused problems for law enforcement.

But Ready, a 37-year-old ex-Marine, is different. He and his friends are outfitted with military fatigues, body armor and gas masks, and carry assault rifles. Ready takes offense at the term “neo-Nazi,” but admits he identifies with the National Socialist Movement.

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Loudoun Times EDITORIAL: The ‘race’ to be the face of intolerance

MoonHowler

From the Loudoun Times 7/13/10

Are you brown-skinned? Do you speak Spanish outside when walking down the street with friends? Do you wear clothing that has Hispanic styles, themes or lettering?

Let’s say all this applies to you – and you’re an American citizen, born and raised right here in Virginia, as were your parents. You follow the law. You pay your taxes. You’re as much an American by law as any sixth-generation white American. Too bad.

If Corey Stewart has his way in the Old Dominion, you could be a suspected illegal immigrant, detained and thrown in jail. Your crime? The color of your skin. Your ethnicity. The way you talk. The way you look.

Stewart is the chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, with previous and likely future intentions to run for statewide office here. But before he pads his political resume, he wants to complete his mission of making Prince William, and all of Virginia, his personal, political and cultural Petri dish of emotionally toxic wedge issues like immigration.

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Briefs Filed by 9 States, including Virginia, Supporting Arizona’s New Law

MoonHowler

Although not mentioned, Virginia was one of those states.

According to the Richmond Times Dispatch:

Richmond, Va. —
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli joined eight other states today in support of Arizona’s new immigration law.

The amicus brief, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, defends Arizona’s and all states’ authority to enforce federal immigration laws along with the federal government. This is particularly true because of the selective and lack of enforcement by the federal government, the brief states.

“While much of border enforcement is left to the federal government, federal law expressly allows states to arrest people who are not legally present in the United States,” Cuccinelli said in a statement.

“Arizona’s law doesn’t change any of this. That’s why we are stunned that the government has sued Arizona.”

The Arizona, set to take effect July 29, requires officers, while enforcing other laws, to question a person’s immigration status if there’s a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.

It also makes it a crime for legal immigrants not to carry documentation of their status in the U.S.

The Obama administration has filed suit against the Arizona law, contending that federal law pre-empts the Arizona statute. It seeks an injunction against its enforcement.

How many briefs and law suits has the AG files since his inauguration? More importantly, how much has all of this cost? Those $350 filing fees are going to add up.

Bloomberg’s Al Hunt says crime is down in Arizona

MoonHowler

Politifact.com reports:

The debate about immigration often involves discussions about whether illegal immigrants cause more crime.

The topic came up on ABC’s This Week on July 4, 2010, when Al Hunt, the executive editor in Washington for Bloomberg News, criticized John McCain for the Republican senator’s comments about crime in Arizona.

McCain had explained his shift on immigration by saying, “The violence is incredibly high. The human smuggling and drug cartels are at a level of violence where 25,000 — 23,000 Mexican citizens have been murdered in the last few years, 5,000 already this year. There’s a level of violence which has increased to a significant degree, which makes the situation far different than it was in 2007” when the Senate last considered immigration reform.

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History Reinvented: Count the lies

MoonHowler

At this point, I am just laughing.  What kind of cajones does it take to go on national cable and repeat the same old lies that we have PROVEN are lies on this blog.

No, the ‘Immigration Resolution’  we have now is NOT the 2007 one.  Corey, Corey, Corey. This was aired this morning:

Start listing the lies. What’s really scary is that Faux News believes it all. The 287(g) program was dangled out later on. Peter Johnson left out the part about being approved for the program, having a memorandum of understanding and vast amounts of training to be part of 287(g).

The lies are just compounding now. And Prince William looks like ….Don’t want to use that expression here. The foil for all this was Mexicans without Borders.

Channel 4 News: Pol Wants ‘Zona-Style Illegal Immigration Law for Virginia

MoonHowler

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From NBC Washington:

The chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors is proposing an Arizona-style illegal immigration law for the entire Commonwealth of Virginia.

The tough law on illegal immigration the county adopted a couple of years ago isn’t sufficient, according to a statement released by Corey Stewart for Chairman.

“We saw a 37 percent drop in violent crime in the first two years of enforcement and overall crime is at a 15-year low,” he said. “But we have anecdotally known, since day one, that the criminal aliens that fled were just going to neighboring jurisdictions.”

So Stewart has started a petition online and a Facebook page for The Virginia Rule of Law Campaign. He has promised a draft of the law soon

It would give police more power to identify and deport illegal immigrants, impose harsh penalties for illegal immigrants, and crack down on day labor and human smuggling. Jails would release illegal immigrants to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement upon completion of their sentences. Police would be allowed to make arrests without warrants if they believed those arrests could lead to deportations. And individual cities and counties would be barred from interfering.

Prince William County’s controversial law doesn’t make it a crime to be an illegal immigrant in the county, but it allows police to check immigration status of people who’ve been arrested, which Stewart credits for the drop in violent crime and fewer illegal immigrants in the county.

Those who campaigned for the law, which took effect in July 2008, argued that the county had to take care of itself if the commonwealth and country weren’t going to address illegal immigration. Stewart’s latest campaign takes the same position.

“As long as the federal government shows no interest in securing the border and no interest in internal enforcement to promote self-deportation, then states and localities will have to pick up the slack,” he said.

And he intends to use the 2011 election to pressure the General Assembly into passing his Virginia Rule of Law next session.

 

Corey’s Updated Website:

 The Virginia Rule of Law Act

  • Enhance Police Powers to Capture, Detain, and help Deport Criminal Aliens
    • Direct Virginia law enforcement officials to ascertain, in any lawful contact, the legal presence of an individual, when practicable.
    • Direct Virginia jails to release criminal aliens to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after serving their sentence.
    • Allow law enforcement officials to arrest illegals without warrant if they have reasonable suspicion that the arrest would make them removable from the United States.
  • Virginia Criminal Penalties for Illegal Aliens
    • Make it a violation of Virginia law to fail to complete alien registration documents.
    • Impose harsh penalties for terrorists and illegals caught with illegal drugs and deadly weapons.
  • Outlaw Sanctuary Policies
    • Prohibit cities and counties from preventing law enforcement officials from inquiring about legal presence or preventing them from sharing information with ICE.
  • Outlaw Illegal Day Laboring and Public Roadside Solicitation
    • Allow law enforcement officials to break up day laboring operations.
    • Prohibit solicitation along all public roads, crippling illegal day labor sites.
  • Crackdown on Human Smuggling
  • Prohibit smuggling and human trafficking, especially for sexual slavery.

    • The election is in 2011. Corey is attempting to ride the coattails of the  Arizona  anti-immigration law SB1070 (download the law) and capture some of the national attention that Arizona is getting over immigration.  It was announced late this afternoon that the Administration will sue  the State of Arizona over its law that is set to go into effect. July 28, 2010.  I suppose Corey Stewart is jealous of the impending lawsuit that will cost an already cash-strapped Arizona millions it can’t afford to spend.  Does Virginia need to get sued also?

    Corey needs to stop grand-standing and stop the continual embarrassment to Prince William County.   There needs to be no Virginia Rule of Law Act.  There are some extremely serious  violations embedded in that proposal that are  Constitutional violations that even a novice can spot.  No Rule of Law there.  If Stewart wants to be Mr. Rule of Law he needs to obey the law and stop trying to find ways to skirt around it just to get his name in the news.

    From the PWC Police Crime Report:

      RAPE STATISTICS

    RAPE STATISTICS 2005-2009
    Way to go, Corey. Last time I thought about it, rape was a violent crime.
    Down load Crime Reports:
    Crime Report 2008
    Crime Report 2009
     

    Anchors Away Baby

    MoonHowler

    fence
    From Huffington Post:

    “Anchor babies” isn’t a very endearing term, but in Arizona those are the words being used to tag children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. While not new, the term is increasingly part of the local vernacular because the primary authors of the nation’s toughest and most controversial immigration law are targeting these tots — the legal weights that anchor many undocumented aliens in the U.S. — for their next move.

    Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they’re on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona — and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution — to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law enforcement officers to ask about someone’s immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists — things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop

    .

    Shoot! Doesn’t everyone act nervous and avoid eye contract during a traffic stop? I know I sure do. If those behaviors are considered probable cause, then we are all in trouble.

    “Anchor babies” is a highly offensive term. These kids have no control over their circumstances in life. And we certainly don’t know why their parents had them. To imply that any child comes in to this world solely to anchor one’s parents to the United States is simply wrong. Hopefully the term ‘anchor baby’ will soon become as politically RUDE as the term ‘pickaninny’ which was used fairly freely when I was a child.

    Of course, this piece comes from Time Magazine, via Huffington Post: Arizona’s Next Immigration Target: Children of Illegals. 

    Illegals? 🙄 Unacceptable. Grammatically incorrect. Time Magazine needs to step it up a bit in the politically correct department. Or if they don’t want to be politically correct, how about using adjectives as adjectives and not as nouns.

    One might contrast Arizona and New Mexico. Notice the silence out of Governor Bill Richardson’s state?
    There are no easy answers but while we search we need to remember to be polite. We need to remember that those ‘anchor babies’ are just little children. In many ways, they are the most vulnerable members of this debate. They fear for themselves and they fear for their siblings and they fear for their parents. For some reason, too many Americans feel that these children simply don’t have feelings. And that is just dead wrong!

    Complete Article

    9500Liberty Runs in Maximum Overdrive in Arizona

    MoonHowler

    An update on 9500Liberty from The Austin Chronicle   in Phoenix, AZ. Perhaps this review is the most accurate of all the different accounts of what really happened in Prince William County. Obviously, 9500Liberty has become very relevant in recent weeks and months as things heat up over immigration in Arizona.

    This interesting documentary, which has spent the last half-year on the film-festival circuit, has achieved, rather suddenly, the utmost in topicality in the wake of Arizona’s passage of its infamous “show me your papers” law. Byler and Park’s film records the 2007-2008 events in Prince William County, Virginia, that surrounded the passage of a similar measure aimed at curbing illegal immigration.

    The county board of supervisors there unanimously passed a law requiring police officers to stop anyone whom they had probable cause to believe was an illegal alien. Byler and Park, co-founders of the Coffee Party, were there to observe every public moment as the board wrestled with the fallout and concerned citizens galvanized around both sides of the issue. Events grew more complicated once the police chief calmly informed the board that new taxes would have to be passed in order cover the $14 million of estimated extra expenses to train his people in the details of upholding the law and to purchase cameras to mount on the dashboards of all police cruisers.

    Most telling, however, was the eventual testimony of the leaders of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the group ultimately behind both the Virginia and Arizona initiatives. In Virginia, the group helped guide the efforts of the indefatigable blogger who founded Help Save Manassas, the group that led the charge against the illegal aliens.

    In the end, this film exposes the calculatedness of politicians who exploit the immigration issue as a boon to their election bids. Part of what makes 9500 Liberty so special is what Byler and Park did with their footage before it was assembled into this feature film. They created a YouTube channel and posted all their interviews and clips online as they were gathered, and they encouraged viewer participation in shaping the material and steering the filmmakers toward unexamined aspects of the subject.

    In time, the Virginia statute was amended to eradicate the “probable cause” provision, so that a person’s legal status could not be investigated unless the individual was first apprehended for another crime. The film has served as a cautionary tale, until the legislators in Arizona, of course, stirred things up again. Byler, whose previous narrative films Americanese and Charlotte Sometimes both won Audience Awards at previous South by Southwest Film Festivals. 9500 Liberty has little of the flowing grace of those movies and evidences the jagged video look and on-the-fly cinematography common to so many modern documentaries. Yet what this film has in urgency and timeliness makes it a unique witness to our times.

    Eric and Annabel were certainly in the right place at the right time.

    Immigration Resolution

    WaPo Says PWC Immigration Resolution Still Controversial

    MoonHowler

    The Washington Post printed this story over a week ago. Elena and I are not sure how we missed it. We believe the parallels are important. We have reprinted the entire article by Tara Bahrampour:

    By Tara Bahrampour
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Friday, May 7, 2010

    Three years after the Prince William County board approved an ordinance similar to the controversial immigration legislation passed last month in Arizona, county residents are still arguing about whether it has achieved its intended effects. The results might offer some insight into how Arizona’s new law will play out.

    Special Report: The Battle Over Immigration

    The Prince William ordinance, which initially required police to check the status of detainees they suspected of being undocumented immigrants, raised ire among immigrant advocates and drew sharp criticism from the county police chief, who said it would cost taxpayers more, lead to allegations of racism and erode police-community relations — predictions now being made by opponents of the Arizona law.

    The Prince William ordinance was modified in 2008 amid charges that it was unconstitutional and could lead to racial profiling. In the end, rather than questioning only people they suspected of being undocumented immigrants, officers were directed to question all criminal suspects about their immigration status once an arrest was made.

    The county also participates in the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement “287(g)” program, in which a cadre of police officers are trained and deputized to act as ICE officers in making status checks and referring individuals for deportation.

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