Thank You, Officer Escobar
Officer Martin H. Escobar claims in the suit that the law will “seriously impede law enforcement investigations and facilitate the successful commission of crimes.”
He also says there are no “race-neutral criteria or basis to suspect or identify who is lawfully in the United States,” including a person’s proximity to the Mexican border, linguistic characteristics and capabilities, skin color, clothing worn or the type of vehicle driven…
Escobar’s suit says the law “is the product of racial bias aimed specifically at Hispanics” and places every Hispanic within the state at risk of losing his or her constitutional rights.
His complaint is here (warning, .pdf), and it’s well worth reading in full, because it provides ample ammo against the inevitable right wing lies. For example:
Escobar expands on this theme, explaining in straightforward terms how skin color, language, music preference, clothing, number of people in the car are not race-neutral identifiers of who is here legally or illegally.
Escobar nails it: cops in Arizona are now required to stop and question anyone who appears to be Latino, the majority of the immigrant population in the state. But the only way to do this fairly, without racial profiling, is to question EVERYONE. What a waste of police manpower!
On top of this, Escobar notes that Latino victims of and witnesses to crimes will have a major disincentive to cooperating with the police and the court system: so while Arizona has decided to transform itself into a racist police state, community support for the police is going to plummet, which creates an environment ripe for high crime.
Already seven other states have expressed interest in passing laws similar to Arizona’s, insane, irrational laws that do no good for anyone, and indeed undermine the fabric of our society.
So thank you, Officer Escobar, for doing your part to put a stop to race-based fascism (also known as Nazism) in the United States. And I am so sorry you have to serve and protect such abject nincompoops.
