A little more than a week ago, a 36-year-old woman I’ll call Sonia Rivera answered a knock on the door of her downtown San Diego apartment. Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Rivera they were searching for a Mexican man suspected of criminal activity, who an informant had told them could be found at their address.
After failing to find the subject of their search – Rivera insists she does not even know the man – the ICE agents asked Rivera to provide documents proving her legal residence in the United States. Unable to do so, Rivera was taken into custody, along with her three sons.
The next day Sonia Rivera and her two teenage sons were deported to Mexico. Her youngest son, an 8-year-old U.S. citizen, was released into the custody of relatives residing permanently (and legally) here in San Diego.
Another “mixed-status” family had been torn apart by the deportation of its undocumented members.
Sonia Rivera and her family were victims of what Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials call “collateral arrest.” They were not the target of a search, nor had they done anything specific to run afoul of the law. But ICE agents came across them in the course of doing their duties, and so subjected them to the full weight of their enforcement authority.
I cannot stop thinking about families like Sonia Rivera’s as I read the news about Arizona Senate Bill 1070. Signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer late last month and scheduled to go into effect by August, SB 1070 makes it a state crime for immigrants to be in Arizona without appropriate documentation issued by the federal government. The law also requires Arizona law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally.
If the new Arizona law survives challenges in the courts, the most hurtful practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement will become codified as a systematic and ongoing priority for all of Arizona’s law enforcement personnel.
Arizona police officers and sheriffs will be required to make on-the-spot judgments about the immigration status of ordinary Arizonans – at routine traffic stops, while out walking the beat, when called to the scene of an emergency.
And because they will be subject to citizen complaints for their perceived failure to enforce the new law, agents of law enforcement will be incentivized to apprehend people unable to document their legal residence.
The “collateral” arrest of undocumented immigrants – and the breaking up of “mixed-status” families – will become standard operating procedure for the entire law enforcement community in a border state in which over one third of the population is of Mexican ancestry.
The Arizona law will be challenged in the courts, but the threat of its implementation is sending shock waves through immigrant communities across the nation, including here in San Diego.
If laws like Arizona SB 1070 become the new fad for politicians wanting to burnish their credentials as opponents of illegal immigration, Arizona will have laid a legal foundation to what for millions of American families will look and feel like a police state.
Most impartial observers estimate the number of people living in the United States without authorization at somewhere between 12 million and 16 million. But nobody knows how many of these millions share a home with family members fully entitled by U.S. law to reside here.
Champions of liberty and common human decency would do well to think ahead and anticipate the promotion of more legislation like Arizona SB 1070. And as we do, it would behoove us to ask whether it serves our nation’s best interests to dedicate our law enforcement officers to tearing apart families like Sonia Rivera’s.
After failing to find the subject of their search – Rivera insists she does not even know the man – the ICE agents asked Rivera to provide documents proving her legal residence in the United States. Unable to do so, Rivera was taken into custody, along with her three sons.
The next day Sonia Rivera and her two teenage sons were deported to Mexico. Her youngest son, an 8-year-old U.S. citizen, was released into the custody of relatives residing permanently (and legally) here in San Diego.
Another “mixed-status” family had been torn apart by the deportation of its undocumented members.
Sonia Rivera and her family were victims of what Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials call “collateral arrest.” They were not the target of a search, nor had they done anything specific to run afoul of the law. But ICE agents came across them in the course of doing their duties, and so subjected them to the full weight of their enforcement authority.
I cannot stop thinking about families like Sonia Rivera’s as I read the news about Arizona Senate Bill 1070. Signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer late last month and scheduled to go into effect by August, SB 1070 makes it a state crime for immigrants to be in Arizona without appropriate documentation issued by the federal government. The law also requires Arizona law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally.
If the new Arizona law survives challenges in the courts, the most hurtful practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement will become codified as a systematic and ongoing priority for all of Arizona’s law enforcement personnel.
Arizona police officers and sheriffs will be required to make on-the-spot judgments about the immigration status of ordinary Arizonans – at routine traffic stops, while out walking the beat, when called to the scene of an emergency.
And because they will be subject to citizen complaints for their perceived failure to enforce the new law, agents of law enforcement will be incentivized to apprehend people unable to document their legal residence.
The “collateral” arrest of undocumented immigrants – and the breaking up of “mixed-status” families – will become standard operating procedure for the entire law enforcement community in a border state in which over one third of the population is of Mexican ancestry.
The Arizona law will be challenged in the courts, but the threat of its implementation is sending shock waves through immigrant communities across the nation, including here in San Diego.
If laws like Arizona SB 1070 become the new fad for politicians wanting to burnish their credentials as opponents of illegal immigration, Arizona will have laid a legal foundation to what for millions of American families will look and feel like a police state.
Most impartial observers estimate the number of people living in the United States without authorization at somewhere between 12 million and 16 million. But nobody knows how many of these millions share a home with family members fully entitled by U.S. law to reside here.
Champions of liberty and common human decency would do well to think ahead and anticipate the promotion of more legislation like Arizona SB 1070. And as we do, it would behoove us to ask whether it serves our nation’s best interests to dedicate our law enforcement officers to tearing apart families like Sonia Rivera’s.
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