P1 First Person: Arizona’s immigration law

By Officer Dan Simmons
Southern Arizona

I am a native Arizonan, born and raised here, and other than a 20-plus year career in the Marine Corps, I have lived here all my life. For the last 18-plus years I have been a police officer in Southern Arizona. My brother lives about 12 miles from the Mexican border in Cochise County and I have spent a lot of time at and around his place enjoying the countryside and the rural lifestyle. I have firsthand experience with what is going on in Southern Arizona related to the immigration issues — I say “issues” because it is many sub-issues all rolled into one big issue.

Since the signing by Governor Brewer of the new Arizona immigration law passed by the Arizona legislature, I have sat back and bit my tongue in the tradition of uniformed service to this country by both military and law enforcement professionals. But the unending ignorance, outright lies, and politically expedient spins being put on the truth has gone too far for me to remain silent.

The main complaint we all keep hearing from those in opposition to this law is that it “gives the opportunity for racial profiling,” or “it is racial profiling.” Some might consider what follows to be a minor point, but it’s not: Hispanics are not a “race.” They are an ethnic group (entitled to civil rights protections, of course) that consists of several races and colors including brown, black, and even white. So even if there were implied masses of “racist” cops running around looking for every available opportunity to stop and harass a Hispanic or Latino person, they’d be leaving out a good percentage of their potential victims by limiting your targets to “brown” people.

IF police officers were running around stopping anyone they perceived might be an illegal immigrant based solely on their racial or ethnic appearance, we all agree that THAT would be unconstitutional. But that’s just not the reality — that’s nothing more than a convenient presumption to fan the flames of opposition to support personal and political agendas.

Further, the implied presumption that Arizona police officers are going to behave like this in any number is absurd — in fact it’s offensive to the fine officers of Arizona. Even aside from our oaths of service, professionalism, state mandated and controlled training, and rigid enforcement of standards of conduct, 99.99 percent of us have too much invested in our careers and made too many sacrifices to our families to make a decision to risk it with such utterly stupid behavior. That .01 percent that do make such bad decisions in this area (or any other areas) are aggressively rooted out by the Arizona Police Officer Standards and Training Board on a routine basis.

Let’s say for the sake of argument we’ve got one of those 0.01 percent—one of those “racist cops” looking for a “brown” person to victimize. A good deal of the time here in Arizona we’ve got large numbers of cars with tinted windows. I can tell you firsthand that often I can’t even tell the gender of a driver let alone their race or color until I get up to the window after the stop.

Regardless, it is hammered into us throughout our training and daily monitored by our supervisors that police officers cannot stop someone just because they feel like it. You have all probably heard of some version of “reasonable suspicion,” “probable cause,” or misquoted versions such as “reasonable cause”, etc. As a police officer I can walk up to anyone and talk to them about anything; if I don’t have reasonable suspicion that a violation has, is, or may be about to take place by them, they are free to leave at any time. If I do have reasonable suspicion, which is going to have to be articulated in my report, I can inform them they are “detained” and are not free to leave while I conduct an investigation. During this investigation I have to discover enough evidence to develop “probable cause” that a crime has been committed by them to actually arrest them; if I don’t, then I must release them from detention and they are again free to go.

I have encountered many persons during my career who were in an illegal immigration status; in not one of those cases did I know that initially or was it because I observed someone I suspected of being an illegal immigrant to start with. They all started as something else like running a stop sign, a DUI, a trespasser on private property, expired registration, etc.

A relatively recent example:

I observed someone run a stop sign as I approached from a 90 degree angle to their position at the intersection and they made a right turn to go in the same direction in front of me. At this point I had reasonable suspicion that they had committed a violation by observing them run the stop sign and could legally stop and detain them. I activated my emergency lights to pull them over and as I got closer I could see and called in their Sonora Mexico license plates and our location as we were coming to a stop. When I approached the driver, I did the first thing we always do and asked for his “driver’s license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance please,” This is an officer safety issue so we know as soon as possible who we are dealing with and can alert us as to whether it is someone dangerous or wanted.

He handed me a Sonoran driver’s license and vehicle registration, both of which were expired. I then had my dispatcher run his name and date of birth to determine if he had an Arizona driver’s license; he did not. At this point I had developed evidence that he had committed a civil violation (not a crime) of driving in Arizona with no license which made the vehicle subject to a mandatory 30-day impoundment by state law. I asked for a tow truck and another officer had arrived to assist me who was fluent in Spanish and improved our communication. I asked the driver if he was a legal resident of Arizona and he said he was visiting from Mexico and had been here two weeks. I asked him for his visa and he said he had left it where he was staying.

He also admitted he was taking an English Second Language class at the local community college, but he didn’t have a student visa, just a general visa which he knew was wrong he said.

The officer who was inventorying and documenting the contents and condition of the car in preparation for the tow and impoundment discovered a tire purchase receipt that showed this driver had purchased tires for this vehicle months before the two week period he said he had been in the U.S.. He offered no explanation for that inconsistency.

At this point we had developed additional reasonable suspicion to the effect that this person was in the U.S. illegally by his own admission that he was here other than the conditions he claimed were on his visa, which he couldn’t produce, and evidence he had been here much longer than the two weeks he claimed.

Those who are here illegally are worried their opportunity to remain is being jeopardized; and those that are here legally as resident aliens complain they might have the inconvenience of having to produce their visa. Legal residents complain they might have their civil rights violated by “racial profiling” cops, however minute that likelihood might be.

Well, what about the rights of:

• Bob Krentz, the rancher recently murdered in Cochise County by an apparent illegal alien or drug smuggler, to life itself?! This man, who despite millions of dollars in damage to their family ranch, continued to aid illegal aliens in distress.
• The Krentz family and other people living in the border counties to be secure in their possessions and property? Krentz’ wife reported even before his death that their ranch had suffered millions of dollars in damage to water, fence, and other infrastructure over the past few years. I have seen homeowners down there that have gone to the lengths of having to put concertina wire over their windows to keep illegals from breaking in while they’re gone and suffer all kinds of damage and thefts on an on-going basis.
• The citizens of this country to enjoy their parks and national forests in border areas that are being trashed and destroyed by illegals discarding food packaging, empty water bottles, clothing, etc. in huge amounts on a daily basis; leaving unattended campfires that have turned into major fires that have threatened homes (my brother’s property was nearly threatened in one such fire but saved by an air tanker drop in the last minutes; mainstream media attributed it to “international campers” – political correctness run amuck!); or made too dangerous by violence and drug smugglers to even be there?
• People like my brother, who have had their homeowner’s insurance companies cancel their insurance years ago because of their proximity to the border and excessive risk to the company to cover them, and no ability to find another company that will?
• Citizens to even be secure in their homes in urban areas with hundreds of home invasions being committed every year by violent drug gangs competing with each other for drug proceeds and product? This was just recently documented in Tucson news media and has led the Tucson Police Department to create the first home invasion task force in the nation in law enforcement.
• Citizens to the right of their vehicles which are being stolen at ridiculous rates to transport illegal immigrants across the border by human smugglers, or transport drugs into the country? My agency has had a pickup reported stolen in the morning and that very afternoon was being pursued by Border Patrol loaded with illegals through the desert.
• Citizens to emergency care in their emergency rooms and trauma centers? All of Southern Arizona has been reduced to one trauma center at the University of Arizona Medical Center after the only other one in Southern Arizona at the Tucson Medical Center was closed largely because they could no longer afford to operate with the continuous unreimbursed loses from the frequent loads of dozens of severely injured illegal immigrants being brought in after the frequent roll-overs in over-loaded vehicles being operated by human smugglers on Arizona’s highways and back roads. Even going to an emergency center is an hours-long investment and a risk of not being seen in a timely enough manner due to them being packed with illegals who have no other healthcare options.
• Small rural fire districts to even survive who have small budgets that get called out to these roll-overs in their areas of responsibility with dozens of severe injuries and incur thousands of dollars in unreimbursed costs?
• Cash strapped school districts that are having to accept illegal immigrant students in their schools by non-tax paying parents to help support it? There has even been documented evidence by film in the mainstream media of children coming across the Mexican border in some of our small rural border towns and then getting in vehicles that take them to Arizona schools and back home to the border and Mexico after school. Not to mention Arizona school districts that have been in trouble with the feds because of insufficient English Second Language special classes for all their non-English speaking students (I’m sure they all grew up here). The state was fined millions for that; never mind it was largely due to the federal government not doing their job in the first place.

The list could go on and on. The bottom line is that Arizona residents have had their rights trampled in the dust by political correctness and an unresponsive or responsible federal government far, far too long and they have had enough! They are far more the victims in this situation than the people breaking our laws to get here to enjoy the civil rights of legal citizens, which they are not!