'I am a citizen': when border patrol agents violate the rights of US residents

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

'I am a citizen': when border patrol agents violate the rights of US residents

Tom Dart in Arizona
Saturday 6 June 2015 12.00 BST

It is a simple question that Carlota Wray has come to regard as an insult: “Are you a US citizen?”

For the record, the answer is yes: Wray has lived in the US for more than 30 years, is married to an American and became a naturalised citizen about a decade ago. But she resents being quizzed about her immigration status, and is sometimes asked to prove it, when she leaves her home in the tiny Arizona border town of Arivaca for routine trips to neighbouring places a couple of times a week.

So do a number of other Arivaca residents. They have stepped up protests against a Border Patrol road checkpoint just outside the town, complaining that it is ineffective, a nuisance, an invasion of civil rights and an invitation for agents to conduct racial profiling.

Dozens of people from Arivaca – population about 600 – held a demonstration on 27 May demanding the closure of the checkpoint, which has been in place for eight years. At the same time, six other Arizona border communities held events in what organisers termed a “day of action calling for demilitarisation”.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/06/arizona-border-town-residents-checkpoint-racial-profiling

[Bullet2012]

1. Immigration law

Immigration law does not invade civil liberties. Check points probably should get a better managed system when considering the local US citizens, if the border towns are next to checkpoints. The locals in any border town should never assist any smugglers activities, illegal activities, but don't complain if they get caught doing so. I also don't feel any officer should target or harass any local or accusing anyone without true and good suspicion or showing solid and good sign of intent to smuggle. I feel civil liberties should be considered before anything, especially when we have the civil rights of Pursuit of happiness, Liberties, and freedom given to us by the US constitution. I feel village, township, State, and Federal management should have a good understanding of police being very inexperienced in many areas in life, and all law enforcement should have better management in place. We the people have a joke for a voting system, and this allows for bad management, which allows officers to go less noticed and allows for bad officers to continue to abuse the law to damage peoples records and make it easy to turn normal people into criminals while going through a normal life lesson mistake. It doesn't help when "The People" of our villages, towns, and cites' don't pay attention to the system, don't vote and don't seem to have much time to get involved. The economy is bad, and the system takes advantage of the people being overworked or too tired to get as involved as they should.