Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Arizona Hypocrisy: Eric Holder Racially Profiles Hispanics

August 25th, 2010

Kevin “Coach” Collins, Coach Is Right

When Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (DoJ) sued the State of Arizona to stop it from enforcing SB 1070 which was aimed at reducing the presence of illegal aliens within Arizona’s borders one of the arguments the DoJ did not offer was a concern that racial profiling would be used to harass people for looking Hispanic. Aside from the fact that racial profiling is specifically forbidden in the text of SB 1070 the DoJ did not use that line of argument because it would have been arguing against itself!

In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Bribnoni-Ponce that federal investigators could use “Mexican appearance” as a contributing factor to their decision to stop and question a person regarding that person’s citizenship status. A sharp contradiction, federal agency denials notwithstanding, the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement not only use “racial profiling” in their everyday duties but Holder’s DoJ has defended their use of the practice on a number of occasions.

In part, the Brignoni-Ponce decision says, “The likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor, but standing alone it does not justify stopping all Mexican-Americans to ask if they are aliens.” As recently as last year, the DoJ defended Court sanctioned racial profiling three times.

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