It’s stories like this one that make me shake my head and wonder just how bug-eyed this country is going to get before we either snap out of it or become something far different than anyone expected.
A guy pulls his car off the road to make a call on his cell phone. Nothing unusual about that, right? Well, that’s what any sane person would think, but it’s not so. Not anymore.
Jorge Mora Ramirez was making a cell phone call from his car, which he’d stopped on the side of a road. That lawful activity shouldn’t have subjected Ramirez to a police encounter, but a local cop interrogated Ramirez and got him to admit that he didn’t enter the country through proper channels. The cop tried to get INS to take Ramirez into custody, but INS doesn’t have the resources to waste on undocumented immigrants who pose no threat to public safety. The clever cop then decided that Ramirez was trespassing, simply by entering the cop’s town.
So in the name of “security” we’re ticketing undocumented aliens? And the rest of us? I mean, if I’m stopped because I don’t look I “belong” somewhere, how am I supposed to prove that I was born here? It’s not like I carry a birth certificate or anything around with me.
This business of people getting hysterical nervous when the see someone of an auburn hue in a place they think that person ought not be is going to get very tedious as time wears on. But it’s already been made clear by Bush himself in a couple of his amazing slips of the tounge. In Dubya’s America, “American = White.” Everybody else is gonna hafta prove it eventually.
As Sean Sirrine at De Novo put it:
…what is stopping these police from demanding documentation from anyone at anytime? If you can be “trespassing” for being in a town, then any American can be forced to provide their papers. The real question is whether those forced to show their papers will ever be white.
I guess it puts a whole new spin on that pre-integration saying “If you’re black, stay back. If you’re brown, you can hang around…” I guess now if you’re brown you can’t hang around, unless you can show your papers.
Via De Novo & TalkLeft
There’s another issue here. In 1979, in Brown vs. Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that absent reasonable suspicion of criminality, police could not force people to identify themselves. But in Hibbel vs. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, the Court ruled, this year, that people detained temporarily on “reasonable suspicion” could be forced to produce ID for police officers. This decision curtails a person’s 5th amendment rights. And we all know that a cop never unreasonably demands ID. Right? Yeah right.
This is the Fitzwilliam, NH case right? It was tried in the Peterbourgh-Jaffery court the other day, but not ruling has come down yet. The judge wants to wait until 10 other cases from Hudson, NH (my former place of residence) are heard. The Hudson police chief took the cue from Fitzwilliam, and started arresting undocumented residents, arresting 9 (?) others. Once all the cases are heard (although in differnt courts as Hudson and Fitzwilliam are in different counties), the Peterbourgh-Jaffery court will rule. To complicate this, it may be the same judge who hears all the cases. In NH, judges travel around the various counties to hear cases, so s/he may be scheduled to hear the all.
Now, all that aside, Fitzwilliam is in the south west corner of the state, which is really rural. My guess of the population of Fitzwilliam is under 5000–this means everyone knows everyone. Hudson, on the other hand, is a suburban town in south central NH–called “Southern New Hampshire.” The town has boomed in the last few years as it is on two major highways (Rt. 3 and I93) so many of the new residents commute to Boston or other Massachusetts jobs. The boom in the town has caused this once rural town to become surburbanized with lots of McMansions, SUVs, and well maintained lawns. Hudson is less than 20 miles away from Lowell, MA and the next town to Nashua, NH which have large immagrant populations who do a lot of the work that white middle class people don’t do–such as landscaping and other labor intesive work. Its population is much larger, well over 20,000–but it’s still a small town that quiets down when they roll up the sidewalks at 8p. While there are some POC who live in the town, they are still the minority.
The cases should be done within the month, keep an eye out. Immagration lawyers are arguing that it is not the police department’s job to do the work of immagration officials. I’m not sure what the prosceution is arguing.
I stand corrected: this happened in New Ipswich, NH which is in the same county as Hudson. I don’t understand why it’s being tried in Jaffery though, which is in another county.
There are many things about the NH judicial branch that I’ve not figured out in the 3 years I’ve lived in the state.