Free Republic

Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ "textualist" and "originalist" methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the...

FRANKFORT — All seven Republicans and one Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants in Kentucky. The legislation has drawn concerns from some groups, including the Kentucky Council of Churches, who have argued that its broad language could result in filling up the jails and encourage racial profiling. The bill allows law enforcement agents to approach individuals and ask for their citizenship status. Three Democrats — Sens. Jerry Rhoads of Madisonville, Robin Webb of Grayson and Perry Clark of Louisville — spoke against the bill and voted “No.” Sen....

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday pushed backed against those who accuse the Justice Department of enforcing civil rights laws based on race, saying people need to just "look at the facts." "The notion that we are enforcing any civil rights laws -- voting or others -- on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender is simply false," Holder said. For more than a year, Republicans and others have been questioning why the Obama administration reversed course on a federal lawsuit against two members of the New Black Panther Party, who were videotaped outside a

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Hazleton, Pa., may not enforce its crackdown on illegal immigrants, dealing another blow to 4-year-old regulations that inspired similar measures around the country. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said that Hazleton's Illegal Immigration Relief Act usurped the federal government's exclusive power to regulate immigration. "It is ... not our job to sit in judgment of whether state and local frustration about federal immigration policy is warranted. We are, however, required to intervene when states and localities directly undermine the federal objectives embodied in statutes enacted by Congress," wrote Chief...

ALBUQUERQUE - New Mexico voters strongly disapprove of the state's policy of giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, and a majority of them give a thumbs-up to Arizona's new immigration law, according to a poll released Sunday by the Albuquerque Journal. According to the poll, 53 percent favor Arizona's law, 35 percent disapprove, 7 percent have mixed feelings and 5 percent don't know or wouldn't say. Hispanic voters agreed with the majority on the state's driver's license policy and supported the city of Albuquerque's new policy of checking immigrant status of anyone who is arrested. However, only 39 percent of...

On Friday, a letter written by Prince William County Police Chief Charlie Deane to Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security John Morton, was released to the public. Chief Deane asked the DHS to stop issuing employment authorization cards to illegal aliens who have deportation proceedings pending against them. In the letter, Chief Deane detailed a recent DUI crash in his county which killed Benedictine nun Sister Denise Mosier. The fatal accident was caused by Carlos Martinelly Montano, 23, an illegal alien from Bolivia who was handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a previous arrest, but was freed while awaiting...

The Obama administration said it would focus its enforcement of illegal immigration laws by targeting workplace activities, but a recent report shows that while audits of employers are slightly up over the Bush administration, worker arrests are down drastically since the end of 2008. Under Obama, employer audits are up 50 percent, fines have tripled to almost $3 million and the number of executives arrested is slightly up over the Bush administration.

After a bad day on the job as a Border Patrol agent, Eddie DeLaCruz went home and began discussing with his wife how to celebrate her upcoming birthday. Then he casually pressed his government-issued handgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. "It was the ugliest sound I ever heard in my life," his widow, Toni DeLaCruz, recalled of that day last November. "He just collapsed." A month later, one of DeLaCruz's colleagues at the Fort Hancock border post put a bullet through his head, too. Suicides including these have set off alarm bells throughout the agency responsible for policing...

Opponents of immigration enforcement are calling the temporary injunction against parts of Arizona's anti-illegal-immigration law a death blow to state enforcement. The Mexican American Legal Defense Fund called it a “warning to other states” that want to enact similar legislation. As the author of the new law, SB 1070, I can honestly say that July 29, when the pared-down law went into effect, was a victory. Many key provisions are still in effect. Local police have more power to enforce immigration laws. Sanctuary cities are outlawed. Illegal day laborers are likely to be arrested and the employers' trucks that pick

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia is urging the state police to ignore Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli's ruling that police can ask people about their immigration status during routine stops. The civil rights group argued that Cuccinelli's opinion lacks a legal foundation and presents constitutional and public policy problems. Cuccinelli issued the advisory opinion Monday at the request of state Delegate Robert G. Marshall. Rebecca K. Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia, followed up with a letter to Virginia's police chiefs Thursday saying the opinion is legally flawed and should be disregarded. But so far, Virginia police...

In the midst of a leaked Department of Homeland Security immigration memo that made it to Senator Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, outlining ways for the Obama Administration to give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, the Center for Immigration Studies yesterday posted a letter that was authored on June 11, 2010 by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Union President Chris Crane titled: "VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE IN ICE DIRECTOR JOHN MORTON AND ODPP ASSISTANT DIRECTOR PHYLLIS COVEN."

Surely there is some irony and hypocrisy in the fact that, on the day after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against some provisions of the Arizona law that specified the enforcement in the state of certain federal immigration laws, President Obama signed into law yesterday the Tribal Law and Order Act. Why irony? Why hypocrisy? First let me observe, and correct me if I am wrong, that state officers, including state judges, are sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution and all (all!) federal laws. If this were not clear before the Civil War, it was made clear after...

Hours after yesterday’s decision by President Bill Clinton judicial appointee Susan Bolton to preemptively stop enforcement of Arizona’s immigration enforcement law, Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), told The New York Times: “This is a warning to any other jurisdiction.” Just in case the message from the Obama administration and its leftist allies was not clear, Obama appointee U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke told The Associated Press: “Surely it’s going to make states pause and consider how they’re drafting legislation and how it fits in a constitutional framework.”

The Secure Communities program is intended to make systematic and universal the identification of illegal aliens in police custody — not people pulled over for speeding or broken taillights but those actually booked and fingerprinted. The whole point of the program, politically, is to move away from deporting "ordinary" illegal aliens (i.e., those guilty only of tax crimes, identity-fraud crimes, employment crimes, etc.) and focus only on illegals who have committed "real" crimes. It doesn't even guarantee that all those found to be illegal aliens will actually be deported; as promotional material for the program says: ICE prioritizes the removal...

The largest immigrant detention center in the mid-Atlantic will soon open in Prince Edward County, an effort to accommodate Virginia's unprecedented surge in detentions of illegal immigrants picked up on criminal charges. The $21 million, privately run center will house up to 584 immigrant detainees when it opens its doors. Over the next year, it might grow to hold 1,000 prisoners, most of them snagged by the federal government's growing Secure Communities program, which aims to find and deport criminal illegal immigrants. Last month, Virginia became the second state, after Delaware, to implement the program statewide, requiring jails and prisons...

Asked what President Obama knew about the spy swap, a senior administration official tonight said that "the president was kept fully informed of developments and approved the recommendations of his national security team on how the matter should be handled." On the PBS NewsHour this evening, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel elaborated, saying, "It was not the decision of the president. It was the decision, obviously, of the law enforcement community and the intelligence community." Did the president sign off on it? Jim Lehrer asked. "The president was briefed about it," Emanuel said.

San Antonio - Pilar Esquivel admits she was in the wrong when she couldn't present her driver's license to a police officer during a traffic stop ... and that he had every right to issue her a ticket. However, Esquivel says when a Shavano Park police officer then threatened her with immediate deportation when she could not show proof of legal residency... that's when she felt what's happening in Arizona could happen here. "After (being pulled over) for the violation and when I could not prove my proper papers, it then went more towards illegal immigration; that I could not...

It’s illegal to enter the United States without permission. At least technically. Improper entry by an immigrant is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in prison. A second offense is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. But in practice, it’s treated much less seriously. “We basically do not prosecute that offense,” said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. “Essentially, if you’re an illegal alien and you come across the border and we find you, we almost never do anything.” Indeed, in 2008, the most recent year for which...

PHOENIX - Police officers were warned Thursday that they probably will be accused of racial profiling when they enforce the state's new immigration law, no matter what they do. The caution was issued by Tucson Police Chief Roberto Villaseñor in a training video released by the Arizona Police Officers Standards and Training Board. It spells out what officers should look for to determine if there is "reasonable suspicion" to believe someone they've stopped for other reasons is in this country illegally. SB 1070 is set to take effect July 29. Villaseñor, who has been critical of the law, said all...

Soon after his confirmation, Attorney General Eric Holder labeled us a nation of cowards, a people supposedly unwilling or afraid to discuss race. Based on my experience as an attorney at the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, Holder has far more to fear from that discussion than do the rest of us. If we had that frank, truthful discussion about race, we’d learn that the Obama administration doesn’t believe some civil rights laws protect every American. The Bush Civil Rights Division was willing to protect all Americans from racial discrimination; during the Obama years, the Holder years, only...