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Our right to security on our side of the border
Michael Swickard
When boating, it is important to make your intentions known to other boats. Likewise, ambiguity is dangerous in the laws concerning how much power individual states have to act independently from the federal government.
Can New Mexico react differently than the federal government to security threats? We on the border with Mexico are alarmed by the border violence adjacent to our effectively open border. Mexico cannot ensure the safety of their citizens. Can Washington ensure ours?
This is not fear-mongering, given thousands of lawless deaths 50 miles from my home. More than 20,000 people have died in three years. Last Friday The Los Angeles Times reported, “A 17-year-old passerby and at least seven officers are slain (in Ciudad Juárez) as two police cars are attacked. Officials say the midday assault may have been retaliation for recent arrests targeting drug gangs… All but one of the dead officers were from the U.S.-trained federal police force… dozens of people were killed across Mexico on Thursday and Friday.”
The primary purpose of our federal government is to protect its citizens. However, for political reasons our government is not closing our borders.
Three questions: Are the current border defenses adequate to protect Americans? No. Second, can the federal government close the border? Yes if there is the will in Washington. Finally, can New Mexico close its portion of the border? Perhaps, if there is the will in Santa Fe.
What allows ambiguity is the political dimension on this border. There are federal laws against coming into our nation without permission. We have passed laws that are not enforced. The majority of Americans do not want citizens of other lands to have free access to our country. The problem is politicians who tie our Border Patrol’s hands for their own political gain.
A border security bill
In Arizona the governor signed a controversial border security bill, not an immigration bill. The federal government controls immigration but Arizona wants those laws enforced because illegal aliens are attacking and killing Arizona residents. Among other provisions it requires disclosure of immigration status if there is reason to suspect the person is not in our country legally. It also makes it a crime to hire undocumented non-citizens.
Some American citizens of Hispanic origin are protesting that to ascertain legal status in the United States is actually a racial ploy to deprive these immigrants who will not go through the immigration process their American civil rights for racial reasons. I disagree.
However, they rightly point out that since their appearance resembles that of people from another country they, real Americans, could be unfairly profiled for questioning. I feel their pain since I live in Las Cruces and travel often within New Mexico. I have been asked my citizenship thousands of times. It bothers me to live in America yet be questioned as to my citizenship daily.
When my father died I closed up the house in Alamogordo though I live in Las Cruces. I went through the Border Patrol station just west of Alamogordo every day for nine months. I was asked every day, often by the same person, if I was an American citizen. Finally, I could not help saying, “I am an American citizen. I was yesterday when you asked; I will be tomorrow when you ask.”
In New Mexico we specifically prohibit the questioning of legal status, yet the federal Border Patrol does it every day. Arizona wants to do what the federal government has done to me thousands of times. Why is it right to do so in one state and not the other, either way?
Making directional intentions clear
In boating, ambiguity is avoided by making directional intentions clear. We must do the same with our security laws. We must first decide if our citizenship can be questioned by anyone without compelling reasons. We also must decide if why, when the federal government can question my immigration status every day, officials in New Mexico and Arizona should not be able do the same.
There is no protest that every day legal citizens who are just traveling in their vehicles are stopped for the purpose of asking our immigration status. Why is it acceptable for the federal government to ask my immigration status without cause but wrong for Arizona to do so with cause? I do not understand.
Now if it is like the Transportation Safety Administration making sure airplane and train travel is safe, well, I can accept that. But instead, it is when we are in our autos and just driving down the road – an American road in the interior of our country.
I guess I am not being racially profiled every time they ask my immigration status. Still, is there something wrong with an all powerful government on the one hand insisting I proclaim my citizenship daily when I have not left the country in 50 years and someone who asks immigration status based upon the appearance of someone being from another country? Which one bothers me more? I cannot say, since all I want our security forces to do is use real intelligence in being watchful of danger to Americans.
Lastly, why should I be hassled every day as to my citizenship while the same federal government allows a relatively open border? If it was not for politics, we would have security on this side of the border.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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I find this “debate” to be quite discouraging and telling about the sad state of our heavily polarized country today. While delivering a commencement address to the University of Michigan’s graduating students last weekend, President Obama’s had some very significant words about such things. His speech was focused on the importance of “a basic level of civility in our public debate.” Which like health care, carbon taxes, environment, etc. bills rolling around Congress these days, immigration has quickly devolved into the abyss of polarized, emotional partisanship where nothing useful is being accomplished except yelling demonizing terms.
“We cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down,” he said. President Obama spoke against “demonizing” political opponents or “questioning their motives or their patriotism.” It is “not the hurt feelings or the bruised egos” such rhetoric causes that’s problematic, the president rightly stated. No, this “kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric” discourages “compromise . . . undermines democratic deliberation, robs us of a rational and serious debate.” It can even “send signals” that “violence is a justifiable response.” There is a need in politics, as the president said, to “treat others as you would like to be treated, with courtesy and respect.”
Very nice words, and of course he and his party do not practice this at times, but the observations are correct. We should have a law similar to the Godwin Law of the internet (where the first one to use Hitler or Nazi automatically loses the argument) about playing the race card (or in the case of Hispanics, the ethnicity card) as an opening argument. I would hope the issue of immigration could be debated and discussed without imputing hateful and bigoted motives to our opponents as an opening gambit.
This horrible racial-profiling bill in Arizona is truly disturbing to those of us who value our constitutional rights. This is not an imaginary attack on the constitution, the way the tea-partiers cry about health care reform and taxes…this is a very real attack on American citizens’ rights to travel throughout the country without being at risk of detention if their “papers” aren’t “in order”.
There is no way to “close the borders” unless you want to build a wall just like the wall that separated East and West Germany for decades. Instead we need to stop the fear-mongering about immigrants and crime (crime rates have gone down as illegal immigration went up during the last decade) and stop fear-mongering about immigrants and the economy (most illegal immigrants pay taxes and more immigrants lead to a more robust economy).
The hate and lies put forth by the hate-group anti-immigrant institutions (such as FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA) don’t help our conversations about immigration reform. People need to start looking at facts, and not just looking for someone to blame for their problems.
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Benjamin Franklin
The same people who live in outrage that Obama the “socialist/communist/Nazi is creating a fascist state with health care reform have the incredible hypocrisy to turn around and embrace the setting up of a police state in their own back yard, all because they think it will only apply to the “deserving”.
People are missing the point in regards to this law. It’s incredibly vague and poorly written, and is ripe for abuse by unscrupulous police officers who literally could arrest someone and haul them to jail just because they don’t carry documents that NO CITIZEN is required to carry. It imposes expensive, unfunded mandates on localities that have no jurisdiction over Federal Law. Worst of all, it creates a climate of fear and intimidation for innocent and law-abiding people.
When my son’s best friend’s family, who are second generation Hispanics and US Citizens their entire lives, say they are now scared to drive through Arizona to go to a soccer tournament in CA, I am angry. When my cousin who is Italian American calls me to ask if it’s safe to allow her dark skinned high school senior to go on a trip to Phoenix without a passport to prove he’s American, it makes me insane. My oldest boys have longtime friends from high school who are now students at NMSU who are of questionable documentation–under this law, they could be hauled off to jail just for going to lunch together at Sonic?
Bad police officers exist, folks, and rolling back our Constitutional rights for them is just wrong. I am a completely unassuming white female “soccer mom”, and two years ago I was pulled over on I-25 by a State Police officer while driving alone to Albuquerque in the middle of the day–after he followed me for ten minutes. He made me get out of my car, stand on the side of the highway, told me he had his video recorder on and proceeded to ask me lots of personal questions regarding where I lived, my family, where I was going. I was terrified, because I knew I had done NOTHING wrong, and I realized that if I objected, he’d probably escalate the situation, so I just cooperated. in the end, what did he say was my violation? A short crack running at the base of my front windshield, for which he “graciously” gave me a warning (which a police officer friend told me later was just an excuse). What was in this guy’s mind, I have no idea. Had knew he had the power to do whatever he wanted, and he seemed to enjoy his opportunity to use it. I can’t imagine if this horrible Arizona law had been in place here back then. Had he demanded that I provide proof of my citizenship or be arrested, I would have spent the day in a Socorro jail.
We need absolutely need protect our borders from the criminals who think they can run freely back and forth. We absolutely need to demand the Federal government reimburse local communities for the economic impact of illegal immmigrants, until it comes up with a way to allow people to come work and live here out of the shadows. But this law is an outrageous overreach, and is not the way to solve these problems. If you are so scared of the threat of illegal immigrants that you’re willing to now have to carry your birth certificate with you everywhere you go, then you need to go back and read George Orwell.
Read the fourth Amendment. ‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
We are a free country, we are entitled to move about freely, without fear of harassment, ureasonable or arrest. Anyone who thinks that this law can or will only effect the people who in their minds deserve it is a fool.
The Tea Party needs to make some new signs if they REALLY value their liberty.
Well said Dr. Swickard. The police profile people all the time, that is part of their training and job. I don’t see all the hysteria over all this. I have been profiled, not on ethnic (as in Hispanic) or racial grounds (as in Native American), but on a profiling of wealth or theft I think. A person driving a fancy sports car in West Texas, I was stopped by the DPS. The first reason the cop gave was I was speeding, I wasn’t and told him so, then he shifted to the fact my NM license plate was partly obscured by my college license plate frame, a violation in Texas. All the while he was waiting for the computer check on my plate and drivers license and looking all inside my car to see if he could spot anything. I suspect after the computer check came back clean, and he couldn’t see anything, but he then asked if I had my contacts in my eyes, as required by my license. I told him yes, he then wanted to have me take them out so he could see. I said no, I had no way of getting them back in without my drops, etc. He said OK, and then gave me a warning about the plates and to “watch your speed”. Clear profiling and suspicion I was dong something wrong. But I don’t mind this, it is their job.
Richard – no, the Border Patrol does not ask everyone their immigration status, they wave some people through without speaking to them. Yes, they stop everyone, but do not always speak to every driver. They do ask some people. Wake up Richard, they profile who to ask. You seem to not understand that the primary mission of the Border Patrol checkpoints are to look for drugs and explosives; hence they often have dogs sniff the cars. Their cover is they are asking immigration status.
Regardless of what they are really looking for, I am suspected of “not being in the United States legally” by the question “Are you a citizen of the United States?” each time I go through the check point. My column asked if it is really constitutional to stop an American on legal business on a US highway every day and ask if I am a citizen when there is no reason to suspect that I am not a citizen.
Contrast that to if I violate a law and are stopped by the police they routinely try to ascertain my identity and in the course of that inquiry if they have reason to suspect I am not a citizen, then and only then with this law in Arizona can the police ask for proof of citizenship. How is that racially profiling? Name any other country who does not ascertain citizenship when there is any suspicion that the person is not being in their country legally?
To close the Southern Border all we need to do is follow the actions of Mexico since they have a closed Southern Border. They do not allow anyone across their Southern Border and react with force to anyone who attempts to cross or cause problems because of their policy. Why is it OK when they do it but not when the USA does it, eh?
Dr. Swickard, the difference is at the border patrol station, they ask EVERYONE, not just people who they have a “reasonable suspicion” is foreign, as the Arizona law states.
Another is that the bill is unconstitutional: [http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/04/23/law-profs-on-arizona-immigration-bill-its-unconstitutional/tab/article/]
The very fact that Gov. Jan Brewer was forced to sign a bill today that she says will end racial profiling (after you wrote this column) shows that even the right-wing extremists in Arizona admitted that the bill would lead to racial profiling and that they had to do something to pretend it wouldn’t.
I’m not sure what you would propose to “close the border” (you offer no solutions in this article but instead say that it is unacceptable to be asked if you are a citizen while in your car, but it is fine if you are walking along the road and a police officer decides you look foreign), so I would like to hear that — and for you to analyze the cost or actually ask someone who would know what the cost of your proposal would be.