{"id":6071,"date":"2010-07-12T11:53:17","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T15:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=6071"},"modified":"2010-07-12T11:58:14","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T15:58:14","slug":"eric-holder-if-at-first-you-don%e2%80%99t-succeed%e2%80%a6play-the-race-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/6071\/eric-holder-if-at-first-you-don%e2%80%99t-succeed%e2%80%a6play-the-race-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Holder: If at First You Don\u2019t Succeed\u2026Play the Race Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though the ink is barely dry on the Justice Department\u2019s lawsuit against Arizona\u2019s new illegal immigration law, Attorney General Eric Holder is already speculating about what to do if (i.e. when) his challenge fails: play the race card<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In legal terms, the Justice Department\u2019s current lawsuit is a \u201cfacial\u201d challenge, meaning that the DOJ alleges Arizona\u2019s SB 1070 is unconstitutional \u201con its face,\u201d or by its own terms.\u00a0 Since SB 1070 mirrors federal law, only the most liberal application of the preemption doctrine would consider identical versions of the same statute to be in conflict, thus requiring federal law to preempt SB 1070.<\/p>\n

Because Arizona\u2019s the law is valid on its face the DOJ\u2019s current lawsuit will lose, and SB 1070 will be allowed to go into effect.\u00a0 Then Arizona law enforcement will be able to ask a person about their immigration status if the person is stopped because of reasonable suspicion she is engaged in criminal activity.\u00a0 According to Holder, a few months after implementation the DOJ would then challenge SB 1070 \u201cas applied\u201d by law enforcement because officers would allegedly ask for immigration papers from a person because of his race \u2013 even though SB 1070 explicitly prohibits the officer from doing that.<\/p>\n

But in order to get enough empirical evidence to prove systematic racial profiling, the DOJ will have to closely monitor the situations where Arizona officers apply SB 1070.\u00a0 To do that will require Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)to cooperate with Arizona officers checking a suspect\u2019s immigration status; something the ICE chief is loathe to do<\/a>.\u00a0 Moreover, since nearly all of the illegal immigrants in Arizona are Hispanic, nearly all of the suspects questioned and verified will be Hispanic.\u00a0 Does the near universal application of SB 1070 to these suspects prove racial profiling?\u00a0 Or, on the other hand, does it prove merely that a particular subset of the Arizona population contains a statistically outrageous number of illegal immigrants?<\/p>\n

Both the current lawsuit and this new proposal by the Attorney General are fools\u2019 errands in sloppy litigation.\u00a0 Eric Holder is 0-for-Everything<\/a> as the nation\u2019s top prosecutor.\u00a0 Hopefully, President Barack Obama will let him get back where he belongs: challenging valid laws for the sake of liberal causes as a private attorney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though the ink is barely dry on the Justice Department\u2019s lawsuit against Arizona\u2019s new illegal immigration law, Attorney General Eric Holder is already speculating about what to do if (i.e. when) his challenge fails: play the race card. In legal terms, the Justice Department\u2019s current lawsuit is a \u201cfacial\u201d challenge, meaning that the DOJ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[846,1358,143,144,1453,498,514,1536,1537,1452],"class_list":["post-6071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-arizona","tag-attorney-general","tag-barack-obama","tag-constitution","tag-department-of-justice","tag-eric-holder","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-racial-profiling","tag-sb-1070"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6071"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6074,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions\/6074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}