Illegal immigration, racist cops and Arizona

Just a few weeks ago, police officers were a beloved part of the Democratic Party's base. Today, they're a bunch of racist pigs.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the heart of Arizona's illegal immigration enforcement statute and the Obama administration's shameless pandering to Hispanic voters has thrown cops under the bus. Somehow, otherwise fine union officers entrusted with public safety and the protection of our rights turn into Stasi xenophobes the moment states give them constitutional powers to enforce existing federal immigration laws.

The complaints have carried on for years, and they'll surely be amplified at this weekend's National Council of La Raza conference, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas through Tuesday: Racial profiling, racist oppression and civil rights violations will result from policies that allow authorities to question the immigration status of people who come into contact with law enforcement and give officers good reason to suspect they might be in the country illegally.

The message from the left: Police cannot be trusted with this role.

But if our police have such despicable traits, shouldn't we be firing them in droves? Instead, the Obama administration says we can solve some of our economic problems by bailing out cash-strapped police departments and bolstering their forces. President Obama's American Jobs Act would borrow an additional $35 billion to save the jobs of laid off police, firefighters and teachers, and then hire even more of them.

So we need more fine police officers, as long as we don't have them question someone's immigration status, which makes them Hispanic-hating racists?

Please.

Pre-emptive complaints of racial profiling and racism serve primarily to squelch debate about immigration policy. The facts surrounding the part of Arizona SB1070 that was upheld by the Supreme Court - the section that requires local police to question the status of people they suspect may be illegal immigrants - trump emotionally charged immigration rhetoric.

First, when the Obama administration made its case to the high court that all of SB1070 should be thrown out, concerns about racial profiling were not part of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's argument. He made not a single peep about civil rights concerns. And the court's decision to uphold the centerpiece of SB1070 was unanimous. (It's funny how the right has piled on Chief Justice John Roberts for upholding ObamaCare, but we haven't heard a peep from the Obama administration or liberals condemning the court's first and only Latino justice, Sonia Sotomayor, for voting to uphold a statute that, we're assured, will tear apart Arizona's Hispanic communities.)

Second, the sinister slogan attached to the Arizona statute - the "show me your papers" law - is an intentional misrepresentation. The law is clear: Police can't stop law-abiding residents solely to verify immigration status. Officers must have a reason to make contact with someone, whether it's a traffic stop for a moving violation or a response to a domestic disturbance. Besides, everyone pulled over by police must show their "papers": a driver's license, vehicle registration and proof of vehicle insurance.

Third, there are very narrow, obvious situations that can lawfully trigger "reasonable suspicion" in a police officer that someone might be an illegal immigrant. For starters, Arizona does not issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants (only Washington state, Utah and New Mexico do). If you're Hispanic and you have a valid driver's license, police cannot reasonably suspect you're an illegal immigrant. Period. An officer who stops someone and first asks about immigration status is violating SB1070.

On the other hand, if police pull over someone or respond to an accident in which a driver has no license, no other government identification and doesn't speak English - an occurrence that's quite common in Arizona - an officer is perfectly justified in asking whether that driver is in the country legally. I spent the first 23 years of my life in Southern Arizona, and stories of cars crunched by unlicensed, uninsured non-English-speakers are about as tired as complaints about the summer heat.

Arizona is getting a bad rap from Latino activists, the Obama administration, Democrats and the national press. More than 30 percent of the state's 6.5 million residents are Hispanic. In the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas, more than 40 percent of the population is Hispanic. Does anyone really believe Arizona police have the time or interest in shaking down one-third of the populace, especially when there are so many Latino officers on Arizona police forces? (Ron Gomez, president of the Arizona National Latino Police Officers Association, couldn't provide an exact percentage of Hispanic officers Friday.)

I'm not stupid enough to believe that police never engage in racial profiling. Of course it happens. Every department in every state has bad cops who operate outside the law, and Arizona is no exception. But it's foolish to suggest that SB1070 will, overnight, turn thousands of good police officers into bad ones.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's ruling, President Obama's treatment of Arizona has been far more troubling than the agitating of liberal activists. Having already declared a temporary end to the deportation of young illegal immigrants who would qualify for relief under the proposed DREAM Act, Obama effectively halted enforcement of immigration law across the state, the border region excluded.

He announced federal authorities would not respond to calls to verify the immigration status of anyone detained by Arizona police - in violation of federal law - unless they're violent offenders, fugitives or people who've been deported previously. Obama then terminated every 287(g) partnership in the state. The agreements allow local police to verify the immigration status of suspects in custody. Those 287(g) partnerships remain in force in more than 30 other states, including Nevada.

These are, to borrow a favorite word of Obama's, unprecedented retaliatory acts against a state acting within federal law and the Constitution.

Remember, Latino activists have long opposed 287(g) agreements. Why? They say checking the immigration status of the jailed leads to - wait for it - racial profiling.

So even though roughly 80 percent of illegal immigrants are Latino, we shouldn't investigate the status of jailed Spanish speakers who lack identification unless we also go through the motions of running immigration checks on jailed white English speakers who have driver's licenses? This makes patting down grandmothers and toddlers at airports look downright sensible.

Vice President Joe Biden will give the keynote speech at the La Raza conference this week. I can't wait to hear what he promises related to immigration reform, considering he and Obama promised "comprehensive" amnesty four years ago and didn't deliver. What else might they give away?

I also can't wait to hear whether any Latino activists will articulate their real immigration goal: A national policy of "Once you're in, you're in," guaranteeing anyone who makes it into the country the ability to remain here for as long as they want.

Supporting the enforcement of existing immigration laws doesn't make you a racist.

Unless, apparently, you're a cop.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer. Follow him on Twitter: Glenn_CookNV.