Barack Obama’s justice department has argued in court that race can be considered in making immigration arrests

  One of the main criticisms of Arizona’s controversial immigration law is the argument that it will lead to racial profiling. Barack Obama’s regime is currently challenging the law based on constitutional jurisdiction, but we all know that one of the main reasons that the regime is challenging this law is because they are trying to appease those that believe this is a racist law.

  Arizona’s law requires that a person be stopped for a primary offense first, and if that person is suspected of being here illegally the police have the right to ask for proof of citizenship. This is the part of the law that has seemed to draw the most ire from the left.

  Imagine my surprise when I read this story about how the Obama justice department has argued in court at least three times that race can be used as a factor in arresting a person believed to be in the country illegally.

  The Obama regime has used the 1975 Supreme Court decision, U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce to justify using race as a deciding factor when arresting a person they believe is here illegally. This seems to be at odds with Homeland Security’s stated position that they do not racially profile anybody–period.

  Here is a little background on U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce:

The Court said law enforcement officers could not stop a car merely because the occupants appeared to be of Mexican descent, but that they could consider such an appearance as one factor in making a determination that there was “reasonable suspicion” that illegal aliens were present.
 
“Even if they saw enough to think that the occupants were of Mexican descent, this factor alone would justify neither a reasonable belief that they were aliens, nor a reasonable belief that the car concealed other aliens who were illegally in the country,” the Supreme Court ruled. “Large numbers of native born and naturalized citizens have the physical characteristics identified with Mexican ancestry, and, even in the border area, a relatively small proportion of them are aliens. The likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor, but, standing alone, it does not justify stopping all Mexican-Americans to ask if they are aliens (emphasis mine)

  Well, this certainly seems an awful like the controversial Arizona immigration law to me. A person cannot be stopped in Arizona because of their race, but if a person is suspected of being an illegal alien after having committed another infraction they can be asked for their papers.

  And this position has stare decisis in the form of  U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce; now we know why the Obama regime has chosen to challenge the Arizona law based on jurisdiction and not for the fact that they believe there is racial profiling built into the law.

  This is another case of Barack Obama and his regime saying one thing while doing another; while Barack Obama claims that he is against racial profiling, his justice department has fought in court at least three times to defend an arrest that was partly based on a person’s race.

  The same people who believe that Arizona’s law is racist must now come to terms with the fact that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are following the same guidelines, (and have argued in court successfully that race is a deciding factor in determining a person’s legality), that Arizona was trying to pursue with their controversial immigration law, for if Arizona’s law is racist so is the Obama regime’s position as argued in court successfully three times.