WP: States, Counties Begin to Enforce Immigration Law

[DeepModem Mom]

States, Counties Begin to Enforce Immigration Law
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 27, 2006

CHARLOTTE -- Police here operated for years under what amounts to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward illegal immigrants.

As elsewhere in the United States, law enforcement officers did not check the immigration status of people they came into contact with, and in the vast majority of cases, a run-in with the law carried little threat of deportation.

But that accommodation for the burgeoning illegal population ended abruptly in April, when the Mecklenburg County sheriff's office began to enforce immigration law, placing more than 100 people a month into deportation proceedings. Some of them had been charged with violent crimes, others with traffic infractions.

The program takes one of the most aggressive stances in the United States toward illegal immigrants, and officials in scores of communities, including Loudoun County, are considering adopting their own version....The House earlier this month was weighing a measure "reaffirming" the authority of local law enforcement agencies to arrest people on suspicion of violating immigration laws.

Some Latino leaders say the program here is contributing to a discriminatory climate in which Hispanic drivers feel as if they are being "hunted" by police. And some law enforcement agencies elsewhere have shied away from enforcing immigration laws, saying that doing so would rupture any trust they have developed in Latino neighborhoods....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092700365_pf.html

[northzax]

1. yes, every American should carry their documents with them

can you prove your citizenship on a daily basis? I firmly believe that you should be arrested and held as an undocumented immigrant until such a time as you can prove your citizenship through a birth certificate or a passport. The burden of proof is, apparently, on people to prove their 'right' to be in the US, so that should apply to everyone. if I was a cop, I would start hauling in everyone who cannot prove citizenship or legal right to be in the country on the spot. not just the brown ones, the white ones as well.

"Papers, please."