ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO GET MORE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS THAN CITIZENS
By Heather Mac Donald
March 31, 2005 10:06 AM
The Los Angeles Police Department is considering new guidelines for how its officers respond to illegal criminals. Far from restoring law and order to the city, the proposed new guidelines only demonstrate how twisted the elite’s attitudes towards illegal immigration are.
Under debate is L.A.’s sanctuary policy, special order 40, which prohibits the police from enforcing immigration laws. Special order 40 has made Los Angeles into a free-fire zone for illegal gangbangers, who know that the police can’t touch them for their immigration crimes. So what does the LAPD top brass propose to do? Confer due process rights on illegal chollos that your average Crips homie could only dream of possessing.
Compare the fate of two gangbangers, one American, the other an illegal Mexican. Let’s say a cop sees a member of the 42nd St. Gangster Crips hanging out with fellow Crips in a park that the gang controls. Congregating in the park is illegal under a local gang injunction. The cop can arrest all those Crips on the spot; he doesn’t need to go before a judge to get an arrest warrant.
Now imagine that that same cop sees an illegal alien member of the 18th Street gang hanging out on Cesar Chavez Blvd. The 18th Streeter has already been deported back to Mexico following conviction for murder. Upon deportation, he was forbidden from ever returning to the U.S. His mere presence in L.A. now is a federal felony punishable by 20 years in jail. Can the cop arrest him?
Absolutely not—not under the old special order 40, nor under the proposed revision. According to the contemplated new rules, that cop first has to call his supervisor; that supervisor has to call federal immigration officials at ICE; ICE officials have to go before a federal judge to get an arrest warrant; then with warrant in hand, the cop may finally arrest the felonious 18th Streeter.
Oops. He’s gone.
This is preposterous. To arrest an American citizen for a crime, arrest warrants are rarely required; about 95% of arrests of citizens are warrantless. But in L.A., under the new rules, illegal criminals will have due process rights that guarantee them not just judicial review before they can be taken off the streets, but federal judicial review—the gold standard of all constitutional protections.
Maybe home-grown criminals should renounce their citizenship and reenter the country illegally. It would be a constitutional windfall for them.
Naturally, the usual suspects—the ACLU, MALDEF--are screaming bloody murder about this proposed new change. It is citizens and legal immigrants who should be crying foul. It is a world turned upside down where border trespassers have more protections from a state they have already thumbed their noses at than legal residents.
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