[Defender968]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

FWIW, my concern stems from reading the entire bill and listening to/reading the comments of others who have as well.

Ok just finished reading the bill, and as I figured there is nothing in it that takes away officer descresion.


From the bill which can be read here. http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY 21 OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS 22 STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS 23 UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, 24 WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

Further if you read when it speaks of making arrests throughout the bill the word MAY is always used, and in legal terms that grants authority but does not require action. If action were required by law it would say MUST.

This bill is well written IMHO, if even provides that LEO's must be defended by their agencies should a law suit arise based on their applying this law.

This bill not only provides new tools to LEOs, the clause under discussion allows anyone to insist that the tools be used to enforce specific laws. There may be situations in which LEOs make a decision based upon professional judgment alone to take a DADT approach to residence status.

That will likely happen, but not because of this bill IMHO, it will happen because there are lots of lazy people on this planet and some of them happen to wear a badge, that's not to say I'm in favor of arresting everyone every time they commit any crime, but if I had this law in SC my stats would have been through the roof.

Source is here

Not sure what you mean with the above link, what did catch my eye was these two statements which make me want to disregard the rest of the article....

Opponents, however, raised the specter of officers untrained in immigration law being required to determine who is in the country legally. They noted that though the bill says race cannot solely be used to form a suspicion about a person's legality, it implicitly allows it to be a factor.

Now I know I'm not a Harvard trained lawyer, and I don't have any special training in immigration law, but when a guy doesn't speak English, doesn't have an id or a green card or a visa, and/or more often than not has an id from another country, has a car that is not registered with no insurance the likelihood is that guy is not here legally.

Then there is this.

"A lot of U.S. citizens are going to be swept up in the application of this law for something as simple as having an accent and leaving their wallet at home," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

Based on this statement I think Mrs. Meetze is an oxygen thief, LEO's never have to deal with people who don't have ID, we have no idea what to do, as a matter of fact if a guy doesn't have an ID we just run screaming..... or maybe we could ask name and date of birth and have control check them for an current license, then we could maybe ask them for the address on their license and check the biometric data that's on the license to ensure we've got the right person.


Mrs. Meetze do us all a favor and leave maters of law enforcement to the professionals, someone with common sense or at least someone with a clue, another shining example of the fine work done by the ACLU.