An Hispanic police officer is part of a court challenge to SB1070 on constitutional grounds, writes LARA MARLOWEin Tucson
POLICE officer Martin Escobar knows all about racial profiling; he’s been there. Escobar’s parents brought him to Arizona in 1970, when he was five.
It took a long paper chase and endless drives back and forth to the state of Sonora for the Escobars to become legal immigrants, then citizens.
Escobar was a schoolboy in Tucson the first time the border patrol stopped him and demanded to see his papers.
“I was scared,” he recalls when we meet in his lawyer’s office to discuss Escobar’s challenge to SB1070, Arizona’s infamous new immigration law.
Early this spring, it happened again. Escobar was driving in Tucson with his wife and two children. Colleagues at the police department had ribbed him about his black Chrysler 300 sedan with elaborate wheel rims – the sort of car favoured by Hispanics. Sure enough, the highway patrol pulled them over.
“They said I signalled too late. I’m sure it was the car, and our looks,” says Escobar. As the patrol car pulled away, his wife Barbara turned to him and said, “You’ve been profiled.”
SB1070 requires police to investigate the immigration status of anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” may be in Arizona illegally. There are approximately 1.5 million Hispanics in Arizona, nearly a third of the population. An estimated 460,000 are undocumented.
Hispanics call the Republican governor Jan Brewer, who signed SB1070 into law on April 23rd, “Jan Bruja”. Bruja is Spanish for witch. Janet Napolitano, the previous governor whom President Obama appointed head of homeland security, repeatedly vetoed similar Bills.
“I was shocked when [Brewer] signed it,” says Escobar. “I couldn’t believe she would do something so offensive to the Hispanic community . . . Anyone who looks a certain way will be stopped. It could be my Dad, my Mom, my cousins, my neighbours.” Six days later, Escobar became the first of five plaintiffs, including the city of Tucson, a policeman in Phoenix and a group of civil rights organisations, to challenge the law on constitutional grounds. Their motions for injunctions to suspend implementation should be heard in the US district court by mid-July, just days short of the July 29th deadline for the law to take effect.
In the meantime, tension builds. Amnesty International yesterday condemned the fatal shooting by US customs and border patrol (CBP) officers of 14-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Huereca on the bridge over the Rio Grande, on the Texas-Mexico border. US officials said the CBP “were assaulted with rocks by an unknown number of people” on Monday. Less than two weeks ago, Anastacio Hernandez (32), died after being shot by the CBP with a stun gun at the Tijuana crossing to California.
Whatever the district court’s decision, the issue will continue to inflame US politics. “Immigration is like the healthcare debate on steroids,” says Richard Martinez, Escobar’s lawyer. “This is more divisive, much more emotional, and it’s laden with racism.” In the early 1990s, when Arizona refused to recognise Martin Luther King Day, Escobar says, “I felt for the black community, because of the hatred spewing out”. Now he has seen that hatred shift to his own people.
“Go home, wetback. You’re worse than the plague,” says one of the letters he received.
A group of young Hispanics recently marched from Florida to Washington to campaign for passage of the “Dream Act”, which would legalise young adults who were brought here by their parents as children. The Ku Klux Klan came out to protest against them.
SB1070 does not refer specifically to Hispanics. “They use ‘illegals’ as a code word,” explains Escobar.
Two passages removed any doubt that Hispanics are targeted: section 13-2928 forbids vehicles from picking up passengers for work, and forbids people standing on roads from offering to work. “It’s an attack on day labourers, all of whom are Hispanic,” Escobar explains.
Kris Kobach, a right-wing ideologue who helped draft the code, urged its authors to include “cars on blocks in the yard” and “too many occupants of a rental accommodation” – minor offences typical of poor Hispanics – as criteria for investigation.
Escobar resents constant attempts to portray undocumented Hispanics as criminals. “They say, ‘What about that rancher who was killed? What about that burglary?’ I’m out there patrolling, and from what I see, these acts are very small compared with what Americans do.” Statistics show that illegal immigrants commit four to eight times fewer violent crimes than US citizens.
“I deal with a lot of illegal immigrants,” Escobar says. “They are normal people with children and jobs. They want the criminals out of their neighbourhoods.”
Sgt Fabian Pacheco, spokesman for the Tucson police department, says: “The police have worked hard to establish good relations with the Hispanic community. If SB1070 is enforced, people will be afraid to approach us to report crime.” The police need to devote scarce resources to car theft and homicide – not immigration offences, he adds.
Police don’t anticipate violence, but it would be “reckless” not to prepare for it, says Pacheco: “We don’t want to get to the point where we have to arrest people or use chemical munitions.”
The authorities are watching “people who might be pushing the envelope; agitators . . . who have demonstrated their willingness to provoke violence in the past”. For example, Roy Warden of Tucson has an arrest record for burning Mexican flags to incite demonstrations by Hispanics.
At this dangerous juncture in Arizona history, the Republican- dominated state legislature just made it legal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.