Judge Rules: If Feds Won't Enforce Immigration Laws, Locals Must Not

By Mac Johnson, Human Events Online, August 15, 2005

The Open Borders Bloc successfully mobilized this summer to put down an unexpected outbreak of the rule of law. The rebellion was brief but threatening, as local law enforcement clearly overstepped their bounds and began enforcing laws willy-nilly--leading many in the ruling elite to wonder where it all might end. Luckily, a judge was able to step in and stop the law before it could be enforced again.

In a case well publicized by the national media, Chief Garret Chamberlain, a police officer in the town of New Ipswich, N.H., encountered Mexican citizen Jorge Mora Ramirez broken down on the side of the road. Ramirez, though unable to speak much English, admitted that he was in the country illegally, was in possession of forged Massachusetts identification bearing a fictitious Social Security number, and was illegally employed in a construction project in a nearby town.

In a move that the media is still grasping to understand, Chamberlain then called the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Division of the Department of Homeland Security (formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service or INS), with the idea that they might want to, say, apprehend and deport the unknown foreign national in possession of forged government documents and investigate the matter as a violation of so-called “law.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement quickly informed Chamberlain, however, that they were not much interested in enforcing immigration or customs laws, and he should release Ramirez before tragedy occurred and some hapless piece of drywall was not affixed at a below-market rate....

So Chamberlain gave up on the corrupt federal immigration system and charged Ramirez with being in New Ipswich illegally...

Chamberlain explained, ''My position was: If Mr. Ramirez was in the country illegally, he was obviously in the town of New Ipswich illegally.”

The logic is incontrovertible.

...In America, there are two sets of laws: those that are passed by Congress to placate the election-year will of the people, and those that the ruling elite actually wants enforced. And leaders in both parties have no intention of enforcing immigration law. These laws exist only to quiet the whining masses....

Last week, the judge hearing the cases issued his decision. Immigration law, he ruled, is solely the federal government’s to neglect, and claims that the act of illegal entry into the US might be violations of any local laws would be “unconstitutional attempts to regulate in the area of enforcement of immigration violations, an area where Congress must be deemed to have regulated with such civil sanctions and criminal penalties as it feels are sufficient.”

In other words, if an unelected bureaucrat at ICE decides that it is OK for an unidentified foreign national to be in the United States illegally, it is OK for him to be in New Ipswich illegally. The law be damned....

Also, contrast the quick reaction to local enforcement of immigration law with the phenomenon of “sanctuary cities”--cities that have prohibited their police from assisting the federal government in finding illegal aliens. Clearly, such prohibitions constitute “unconstitutional attempts to regulate in the area of enforcement of immigration violations,” yet they continue unimpeded and without pressure from the media and ICE, even years after court rulings against them....

Whatever local governments do, they must not surrender. Because when you fight back, sometimes you win even when you lose.

Read the complete article.