Arizona and Immigration

In a closely watched decision today, the Supreme Court issued a mixed ruling on Arizona's controversial immigration law, S.B 1070.  Striking down some provisions of the law, the Supremes upheld the law's requirement for law enforcement officers to conduct an immigration check on persons otherwise detained.  Within hours, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano issued orders to federal immigration officials in Arizona to essentially ignore any report from Arizona law enforcement, except if the person were being held in connection with a crime.

That's right folks.  The President's cabinet level official in charge of stopping illegal immigration has told her people not to uphold the law.  That is, legitimate reports of persons suspected by local officials to be in the country illegally are to be ignored without some other crime having been committed.

As I was driving home this afternoon, I listened to Mark Levin for a bit.  In one of his full-throated rants, he yelled something like "given the Homeland Security Secretary's pledge to ignore law enforcement, why would they even take the trouble to conduct the background check?"  I've got a reason for you, Mark.  To get a record of the interaction with the law, to keep a database.  Why?  So that there is a record of each and every time the Feds ignored a report on someone Arizona officials believed to have beeen here illegally.  Why?  So that when one of these people kills a little girl while drunk driving, or when one of these people is arrested for murder, Arizona's Governor can broadcast at the top of her lungs (to any media outlet that will pay attention), that a preventable crime was not prevented because the President was too busy to enforce the laws of the nation.