Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. We cannot answer this question before we define “reasonable suspicion” unambiguously.
Reasonable suspicion is already pretty well-defined, but the definitions of all legal standards are pretty ambiguous.
Not in terms of this law. That definition does nothing to suggest what constitutes reasonable suspicion of undocumented status.
True enough.
Well, if Arizona cops utilizing this law have to follow the rules that govern Terry stops, that’s at least a definition, and better than no definition at all. I may assume then, that reasonable suspicion will be founded on this sort of thing? “Courts have ruled (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)) that a stop on reasonable suspicion may be appropriate in the following cases: when a person possesses many unusual items which would be useful in a crime like a wire hanger and is looking into car windows at 2am, when a person matches a description of a suspect given by another police officer over department radio, or when a person runs away at the sight of police officers who are at common law right of inquiry (founded suspicion).” (From your cite.)
I have no objection to that.
Well, yes and no. I’m not sure what the illegal-immigrant equivalent of a 2am coat hanger is.
Nobody is. In my opinion, it’s impossible to define. That is what makes this law so dangerous.
Can you be an american citizen without speaking a lick of english? check
Can you be an american citizen without being white? check
Can you be an american citizen speaking English with the heaviest-of-sounding accents? check
Are american citizens required by any law or regulation to carry identity documents when in the borders of the United states? nope
people need to re-read Isamu’s post #79 to better understand how asinine this law is.
and as for the reasonable suspicion malarkey you gotta understand that reasonable suspicion was a standard carved by the courts to permit further, non-voluntary detention of a suspect where a cop has a reasonable suspicion that that person has committed a crime. nowhere in “reasonable suspicion” land is a suspect required to cooperate with the cop or cough up documentation that one is not required to possess.
but, no matter, what “specific and articulable facts” can anyone point to that sheds light on someone’s, and this is a kind of important point, mutable, abstract status? anyone? yeah, you can’t.
basically, they use “reasonable suspicion” to make this law sound constitutional because they know that without the patina of constituionality slapped on to this pile of shit, everyone would recognize it for what is: a gestapo-like powergrab for fuckheads like Joe Arpaio to jack off to.
Well, I suppose the Arizona legislature might have passed the bill in light of a recent rash of illegal immigrants walking by peace officers while loudly announcing their residency status.
No. it’s directed at anybody with brown skin. You don’t have to be in the country illegally to be harrassed and arretsed under this law. That’s the point – not what it does to undocumented residents, but what it does to legal residents and actual American citizens. The law says that if you have brown skin, you must carry papers or be arrested.
The issue is whether American citizens are entitled to a presumption of innocence and free travel without having to carry papers.
well apparently according to this law’s proponents, the cops knew (sorry, had a reasonable suspicion of) that fact already - so why get all butthurt just because the illegals were telling them something they already knew?
Who was the female official that I saw at a news conference who awkwardly muttered something about recognizing aliens by their “suspicious hair” and their shoes?
Does anyone know if there is a standard under federal law? INS must have some procedure for suspecting when someone is an illegal immigrant.
WOW! That sums it up pretty well there. I’m a Hispanic in Texas. Born here. 4th generation. I have no more of a tie to Mexico than most American Anglos have to England. Love the food. Do the right thing. Period. That’s how to live life. America doesn’t want people sneaking in undocumented. Do the right thing and don’t do it.
We are not to blame for having to establish or enforce laws that address this issue. I’ve been strip searched at the airport(1997)for looking Arabic and buying a one way ticket. No problem. I’m not a terrorist. I just went along on my merry way. I blame the terroists.
The USCIS is not allowed to stop people on the street due to a reasonable suspicion that the person is an illegal alien. Why wonder about this now? Why not wonder about how to define “reasonable suspicion” before passing this law?
The Governor of Arizona. No lie.
Does Arizona keep track of the citizenship? That is, if the officer calls in your license, can the Arizona department of driver licensing (whatever it may be called) say, “Yes, we issued license number such-and-so to a legal resident,” vs. “…to a citizen?”
OK, this thread has a lot of hysteria and ill-founded speculation.
Much of it relates to indignant challenges about how unfairly and in what racially-baised a ways the law is applied. These seem a bit premature, since it’s unclear how the law will be applied, and what guidelines the police will use to apply it.
Other objections relate to the law as written, with claims that it’s violative of the federal constitution in some way.
Finally, there’s a slough of objections that boil down to, “It’s just wrong.”
I am going to decline the opportunity to venture into the third area for the moment, because I see very little likelihood that oposing viewpoints will sway each other.
So that leaves the second.
As I said in the Pit thread on this subject, I suppose the federal preemption argument might fly, but I doubt it, especially in view of the fact that at least two federal cirvuits have found that local law enforcement officers have “inherent authority” to enforce federal law.
I don’t think the speculation is ill-founded. A page of history is worth a thousand pages of logic. If the application of race neutral laws has been overwhelmingly racist then I don’t see how police can do better with this law.