USA Today is running a story headlined "Cities get at illegal immigrants through cars." The article begins with a bold proclamation: "Local officials getting tough on illegal immigrants have a new target: their cars." Only "getting tough" has nothing to do with immigration or deportation. "Communities in Alabama, California, Illinois and elsewhere are using laws that punish drivers without licenses. Cities often tow cars immediately." So drivers without a license get big fines, a tow job and that's it. But wait! Even this approach is under attack. "'There's been a long history of ordinances that don't say anything about immigrants and nothing about national origin, but clearly are aimed at particular groups,' says John Trasviña, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 'They have uniformly been struck down.'" For example, they're challenging a law in Waukegan, Illinois that fines a driver without a license or insurance $500 and impounds their car (more fees). "Ramon Becerra, regional head of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, says it [the city ordinance] promotes racial profiling. Most drivers whose cars are towed are Hispanic, he says." Am I the only one that wonders why this article never questions the fact that police don't/can't check these dangerous drivers' citizenship and pass their cases to immigration authorities where appropriate?
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But Mr. Farago, that reporting of the immigrants would be PROFILIN’!
Hmmn, I always thought the purpose of police is to put a stop to ILLEGAL activities. Guess I was misinformed.
$500 fine for not having insurance? That’s it?! why bother with insurance at all then?
It is a huge problem out here in the southwest. A few years ago I had a much longer commute to work and I would see almost one accident a week where one of the drivers would hit the other party, causing damage, then take off as fast as possible. My guess: No license, no insurance, so good enough reason to get out of there before the police show up.
Just curious: Since a driver’s license has become the de facto ID card, and the driver who gets pulled over has no license, how do you determine whether or not he or she is an immigrant, and whether or not he or she immigrated legally?
They could ask. Investigate. You know, police type stuff. If a person has committed an illegal act, whether they're a U.S. citizen or not, why wouldn't the police establish their identity? They could be wanted for serious crimes.
Policemen know the way to enjoy a long hassle-free career is to FIDO certain offenders.
FIDO = F**k it, drive on
Mr. Farago: I don't think that would work. The police can't detain a person just because they don't know who he or she is. Unless "driving without a license or insurance" can get you arrested, or a car matching the one being towed was seen at a crime scene, I just don't see how the police have the legal right to stop someone from simply walking away.
LoserBoy:
So if I’m a homicidal pedophile on the lam from the law and I get pulled over for a minor traffic offense and I don’t “happen” to have any ID I can relax ’cause they’re going to let me walk?
Robert Farago:
I have no idea what the ideal rules for law enforcement are, but there are serious constitutional limits on why the police can detain you (the phrase “probable cause” is a big one, as is “reasonable suspicion”), and I strongly suspect that “somebody, somewhere did something” won’t pass muster.
If the police know what kind of car the Killer Kid Diddler drives, or what he looks like, then they’ll have probable cause to detain anyone matching the description, even if it turns out to be the wrong guy. (My dad got detained once because his truck looked like that of a rapist’s; true story!)
If the driver is merely acting suspicious, then I’m unsure how that plays into establishing probable cause, but I think the police have leeway there.
But if the bastard is a real smooth talker (and that’s certainly a stereotype with serial killers), I don’t see how the police have a legal basis for treating driving without a license any differently than speeding.
Maybe they do, and I’m just ignorant of the law, but the whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing suggests not.
LoserBoy: The driver in question has been pulled over for an infraction. When police discover that the operator of the vehicle is driving without a valid license, ipso facto the "suspect" has committed an offense. [NB: In many states, driving without a license is either a civil or a criminal offense, depending on the circumstances. Perhaps that legal loophole needs closing.] At THAT point, the police should have the right to ask for identification. I mean, this is NOT a case of the Gestapo asking random passers-by for their papaz. It's a case of an unknown person committing an EXTREMELY dangerous, illegal act. I am as wary of police powers as many people who own their own power generator, MREs and a seledction of shotguns. But I hardly think asking unlicensed drivers to verify their identity is unreasonable. I would expect the same treatment myself.
Operation of a motor vehicle by an unlicensed driver is a crime and you will be arrested in NYC.
Get caught driving without your license and you are a licensed driver in NYC you can also be detained and arrested! If you are lucky enough to know your drivers license number and are dealing with a reasonable officer you might get off with just a big fat fine.
Remember folks driving is a previledge that does allow you to put other people and property at risk. It is in no way unreasonable for law enforcement to demand that you successfully identify yourself with legal documentation (drivers license/ permit)if you are stopped or involved in an accident or other incident on a public road.
The mere act of an illegal alien operating a motor vehicle on our roads is in fact a crime simply because they are NOT licensed to do so. At the very least they should be able to produce a drivers license from their “home” country. Illegal aliens on our roads are a serious problem because they are far more likely to flee if the event of an accident or heaven forbid a fatality. Needless to say if they are unlicensed they are also uninsured.
It’s a case of an unknown person committing an EXTREMELY dangerous, illegal act.
I have to disagree with this statement, at least when being used as a blanket assumption. Driving tests are a joke, and as such, having that piece of plastic in my wallet does nothing to make me a good driver. Like red-light cameras, primary enforcement of seat belt laws, and far too many speed zones, they’re used principally as revenue generators. (That also will inevitably apply to some, but surely not all, of the reasons the unlicensed person got pulled over in the first place.)
Once that problem (putting cash over safety) has been addressed, I’ll almost certainly agree with you. And yeah, the civil versus criminal thing definitely needs cleaning up.
Anyway, I’m not really trying to argue that the police shouldn’t be doing these things, but rather questioning whether they’re even allowed to do them. Every time the Supreme Court weighs in on the fourth amendment, I have to hear about it from my cop buddies, and to hear them talk, they’re lucky they can even pull you over in the first place.
This my have been revisited since, but the U.S. Supreme Court looked at such an issue in June of 2004.
Some snippets from an article in the Pittsburgh (PA) Post Gazette…
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday upheld the conviction of a Nevada rancher who repeatedly refused [11 times] to give his name to police after he was stopped on suspicion that he might have been abusing a passenger in his truck.
Civil libertarians accused the court of approving police-state tactics, but law enforcement groups said the decision would make Americans safer.
“Asking questions is an essential part of police investigations,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court. “In the ordinary course, a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment.” As for the Fifth Amendment, Kennedy said, “answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be as insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances.”
Kennedy noted that 20 other states have enacted similar “stop and identify” statutes.
Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented. Breyer accused the majority of abandoning a “generation-old” principle that citizens in Hiibel’s situation don’t have to answer police questions.
But Charles Hobson, a lawyer for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which filed a brief in support of Nevada, countered that the ruling was “a significant victory” for public safety. “This was not an unjustified demand of ‘your papers please’ by an officer of a totalitarian regime,” Hobson said. “It was a reasonable request by a sheriff’s deputy who had been called to the scene of a suspected crime. Had the court agreed with the defendant’s claims in this case, the resulting decision would have tied the hands of police.”
Sharon L. Davies, associate dean of the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, said, “You can be sure of one thing. This opinion will leave open questions the court will have to address in the future.”
Anyone not legally in the country has no rights.
Any right granted by the Constitution applies to citizens and by extension to guests in the country legally.
Illegals are trespassers and should be treated as such.
Cities and police departments should be sued for gross negligence and failure to enforce existing law and forced to pay damages caused by an illegal if it can be shown that they failed to report and detain him/her when they had the chance.
The legal precedent would be the millions in damages paid to the 9/11 survivors.
Further the law should be changed to what it is in most any civilized European country, a child gets the citizenship of the mother, the place of birth is irrelevant.
I thought the police were supposed to profile illegal activity – isn’t that’s why we train them? Being in this country illegally is a crime and if the majority of those illegals happen to be Hispanic then we can’t expect the police to pretend otherwise. Hispanic community leaders should stop making excuses for people breaking the law.
I am also a migrant but I didn’t jump a fence – I applied and stood in line.
Thanks, Glenn Swanson!
But Hippo:
Anyone not legally in the country has no rights.
False.
The Supreme Court has ruled, for example, that “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.” That means illegal aliens are entitled, at a minimum, to due process.
i for one would prefer this forum to stick to automotive topics rather than turn into an ill-informed blabberfest on immigration issues.
I think it is a bit unfair to blame the Waukegan cops. Immigration is a federal responsibility – there are plenty of bloated federal agencies that are supposed to be dealing with this issue.
Chicago and Evanston – close to Waukegan – are “sanctuary cities”. It is city policy not to inform federal authorities when they come into contact with illegals or discriminate between illegal or legal immigrants – that goes right across city service, police, education etc.
It’s also de facto federal policy not to interfere with these local policies. So really why should Waukegan cops bother?
On the other hand there wouldn’t be any illegal immigrants in Waukegan if people there cared about the immigration status of the guy mowing their lawn. If the cops started picking up every illegal immigrant that crossed their path it would get expensive pretty quickly (raising property taxes) and who would mow those lawns? Far easier just to levy a local tax – that $500 fine – on every unfortunate who passes through town.
“Anyone not legally in the country has no rights.”
This is not true.
Those of you not in LA may not know about Special Order Number 40 – it’s a mandate (not a law) that prevents police from asking about the immigration status of arrestees. You know, like gang members driving without licenses or insurance.
The discussion here is an interesting illustration of a legal doctrine we might call “sympathy for the offender nullification.” The effect is to give a kind of immunity to someone/group who, although clearly a transgressor, are thought to deserve forgiveness. It’s like jury nullification, when a murder defendant is acquitted by a jury that agrees the victim “deserved killing.” Or that “if [the defendant] hadn’t done it, then someone else would’ve.”
USA Today ran that headline because, in its view, the purpose of enforcing license and insurance requirements was to victimize people they thought should be immune from those laws. So: the offender is poor, therefore shouldn’t be asked to buy insurance; The offender is here illegally, so shouldn’t be asked to get a driver license. The offender is here for a noble purpose (to live better), so shouldn’t be expected to respect immigration laws.
My state demands proof of insurance to register a vehicle. But it also agrees with the notion that some folks are too poor to be truly required to have insurance. It tolerates the practice whereby people buy a basic policy and use the proof of it to get a car licensed, then immediately cancel the policy for a refund. It’s just a little hiccup in the offender’s cash flow, then they’re good to go!
Loser Boy,
Due process can take many forms, of course they should be treated humanely, but they should be shipped out quickly. Bottom line is that they are the financial responsibility of their own government, not ours.
They grossly degrade services for our own people.
If it needs to go in front of the Supreme Court again, so be it and as soon as possible.
The biggest failure of most well meaning but naive people, is the failure to comprehend the exponential function.
http://www.numbersusa.com/index
All are equal, but some more equal than others.
– G. Orwell
Animal Farm
Why should illegals get away with more the Americans? Why do the local police not give a crap? How should you report someone that is here illegally, works for someone, has gotten married to a young American girl (that does not know him all that well), and drive around putting everyone around him in danger? What is wrong with this picture?