The Cinco de Mayo Parade in Detroit featured such lovely banners as one saying:
"Undocumented Unafraid Unapologetic"
The Detroit Free Press: Hundreds turn out for Cinco de Mayo parade
One would think if you're illegally in a country you would neither want to call attention to yourself nor have the chutzpah to announce to all and sundry that you are not only illegal but that you feel no need to apologize for your ongoing breaking of the law and your illegal status.
How brave they must be to walk out in public with what is essentially a "I'm breaking the law come and get me" sign. You'd think that sign would constitute probable cause...
Of course they are only "unafraid" because they had already received assurances from Detroit police that the police will not do any immigration enforcement during the parade:
The Detroit News: Craig: No immigration checks at Cinco de Mayo parade . Even with that assurance however, they seem to be so unafraid that they did not show their faces to the photographer...
Not so brave nor unafraid after all, that.
The precedent now being set that a Police department will pledge to not enforce the law and deliberately ignore illegal acts in broad daylight that take place right in front of them should be an interesting one. Will the Detroit Police follow this up with an announcement that next March that they won't do any public open alcohol enforcement on St. Patrick's Day?
1 comment:
The police probably can't do any immigration enforcement. Federal immigration agencies (ICE, CBP, and CIS) have exclusive jurisdiction, due to the complexity of immigration laws. The best analogy is income-tax law. It's a felony not to pay your income tax, but the police can't arrest you for it; the IRS has exclusive jurisdiction.
One of the past permutations of the Immigration and Nationality Act contained a provision to train and authorize local police to enforce immigration law (Section 287(g) of the Act). It was used for a brief time in the early 2000s, but abandoned by You-Know-Who, and I don't know if it's even still part of the law.
And ICE and the Border Patrol (which has a station in Detroit) are focusing fairly exclusively on criminal aliens, so this idiot will probably get a pass, unless he takes a pinch for a violent crime.
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