This news story from Chicago highlights the danger posed by those who fan the flames of anti-immigrant/anti-Latino hysteria.
A Chicago man who spent the weekend in jail and faced deportation on suspicion he is in the country illegally said what happened to him illustrates the need for America to change the way it deals with immigration...
"That's crazy. Because I was born in Puerto Rico. I never knew that Puerto Rico wasn't part of the United States," the 32-year-old said Monday.
Caraballo said he repeatedly told officers that he was born in Puerto Rico and therefore an American citizen. His mother also presented his birth certificate, but despite that and his state-issued ID, officials told him he was facing deportation.
Lucky for us, Assemblyman Greg Ball is trying to bring this madness to the great Empire State and actually make it a matter of policy. Ball has proposed legislation (A.6746) that would require a "bail hearing no sooner than 72 hours after bail application for person presumed to be an illegal alien." Interesting how a supposedly liberty loving tea party member could suggest turning New York into a police state where citizens can be denied bail based on the suspicions of the authorities. Clearly, giving the government the power to delay a bail hearing for such a long period because of the "presumption" of illegal immigration is opens the possibility, indeed, the near certainty, of major abuses of power by any official nursing a grudge or nasty prejudice or just looking for a payoff. Investing such arbitrary power with the state would, in turn, expose the public to a hale of civil rights lawsuits.
Of course, in Assemblyman Greg Ball's classic legislative tough guy style, this is another preposterous one house, one sponsor bill. Greg Ball's proposal is so toxic that no one, not even a member of his own caucus, has signed on to this bill as a co-sponsor. |
