Immigration ruling: Will Supreme Court decision have impact here?

When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision Monday on the Arizona law that seeks to crack down on illegal immigration — Georgia has a similar law — local individuals who deal with such concerns every day viewed the ruling from differing perspectives.

Maj. John Gibson with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office noted the decision seemed to “appease” both the federal government and Arizona — but overall he doesn’t believe it will affect immigration enforcement in Whitfield County.

“They do like they do in some controversial cases, they kind of pick and choose pieces of the legislation to appease both sides,” Gibson said. “And I think they probably did that in this case. It looks like it. It benefits both parties that were litigating, in a sense. But, you know, from our perspective — even after last year after (the Georgia law) passed — we really didn’t see a marked increase in our numbers as far as illegal aliens here in Whitfield County. We’re kind of in a unique situation because our numbers are driven by the economy like most of the other areas where they have alien workers. Of course, our economy and our work’s been down, so obviously the numbers reflect that. So we’ve not really seen a big increase after the ruling last year as far as our arrest numbers.”

Gibson called the “show me your papers” requirement — that police check suspects’ immigration status — “pretty reasonable from our perspective.” The Supreme Court upheld that provision, although the court said it could face additional legal challenges.

“Because we, having contact with people we believe have been involved in criminal activity, try to identify them,” Gibson said. “If I stopped you on the street and suspected you of a crime, the first thing I’d do is ask for your driver’s license or identification. So a lot of times that it is not unreasonable for you to ask someone to show you who they are — we can have some kind of idea who we’re dealing with.”

But Gibson said he understands the confusion over the identification issue.

“I can see where there’d be an argument between a driver’s license and immigration papers because sometimes those are the only papers an individual may have,” he pointed out. “So it’s a matter officers have to be trained in. They have to conduct themselves professionally and not abuse their authority when they’re dealing with suspected illegal aliens — there’s procedures in place, (the officers) are trained to ask certain questions, and as long as they conduct themselves the way they’re trained we should not, and have not had, any complaints from the citizens.

“Basically — and I’m not trying to pat ourselves on the back — I think we’ve been in the forefront of handling the illegal alien situation in this part of the state. Once we recognized it, we asked for help. We went to people who were having the same problem and addressed the problem and got their suggestions, and we went to the federal government. We saw where we were eventually going to be swamped with the problem because the economy was (going) so well and folks coming (here).”

Gibson said the sheriff’s office contacted officials in Arizona and Texas — and in north Georgia areas such as Gainesville and Cobb County — to see how they were handling the influx of immigrants.

“Now any time we have these tweaks in the law like this Supreme Court ruling, we say, ‘OK, now how is this going to affect us?’” he said. “What they’ve said so far is really not going to affect our operation unless there’s something I can’t read in the ruling that they sent to us. The way we’ve conducted ourselves is pretty much along the guidelines that they stated today.”

‘Equal protection’ issue

Dalton immigration attorney Cesar Orantes called the ruling “very, very, very good news in the Hispanic community” — with one caveat.

“There are four things that the court discussed,” he began. “The first one is the law that requires a person to carry a green card, let’s say, the alien registration card, they have to carry papers, you know. The court said the state can’t require a person to do that. So that’s very good news if anybody’s worried about a police state. You’re not required to do anything like that.”

Orantes said the second issue was that in Arizona it was a crime for someone in the country illegally to solicit or apply for employment.

“What it did was it punished the employee or the worker looking for work,” he said. “(Arizona law enforcement) can’t do that now. The only thing they can do is punish the employer (if they hire someone in the country illegally), the same thing that Georgia has done under E-Verify. But they cannot punish the (potential) employee for looking for employment.”

The “third thing,” Orantes said — still emphasizing the positive — involves arrest powers.

“Arizona would allow state officers to arrest people without warrants if they thought they were suspected of being ‘removable’ — which is an immigration term,” he explained. “They’re not allowed to do that anymore.”

But Orantes said the court’s decision to leave in place the “show me your papers” provision is less favorable.

“The one thing unfortunately they didn’t do was overturn the section of the law that allows the police officers to detain people and to verify whether they have legal status or not,” he said. “And the reason I say that is a bad thing is — let’s just use an example — if you and I go up there and you have an American kind of name, they’re not going to detain you for long. I mean, you would think they wouldn’t. But with my name, Cesar Orantes — or my appearance — they might automatically assume, ‘We might need to check this person out.’ So there’s an equal protection issue there, OK? The court didn’t decide that it was pre-emptive — what it said was we can’t decide on this right now because we don’t know how the law is going to be enforced. If the law is going to be enforced thoroughly, there is not an issue. But my gut’s telling me that’s not going to happen. It never happens that way. I believe they’re going to wait for the future to see how it plays out.”

Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia “claimed victory” in a press release.

“We’ll have to wait to see how the ruling on the Arizona immigration law will affect our state’s enforcement reforms because Georgia’s law is not identical to Arizona’s,” Deal stated. “That said, it appears the court has upheld the major thrust of our state’s statute: That states have the right to assist in enforcing federal immigration law.”

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Immigration ruling: Will Supreme Court decision have impact here?

‘Not going to affect our operation’

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