Posted on 10/01/2013 11:40:15 AM PDT by ColdOne
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FILE: Jan. 9, 2008: A U.S. Border Patrol agent watches over a group of immigrants arrested after crossing illegally from Mexico through the Altar Valley in Arizona. (Reuters)
PHOENIX – Arizona’s most populous county halted prosecutions on Monday of smuggling suspects and the people they allegedly bring to the United States.
The move came after U.S. District Judge Robert Broomfield ruled Friday that a 2005 state law doesn’t allow Sheriff Joe Arpaio or county prosecutors to charge immigrants with conspiracy if they arrange to be smuggled across the border. Broomfield said the policy criminalizes actions that federal law treats as a civil matter.
‘‘It is hard to imagine a more blatant conflict than that,’’ the judge said in his 60-page ruling.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The judge is a Reagan appointee.
Sad to see the judge compromised and abandoning the principles of States’ Rights.
If the federal government is shut down, why does the ruling of a federal judge carry any weight?
Obviously suffering from McCain Syndrome-- he needs an orange jumpsuit and a few months in the desert to work it off.
A Judge bought and paid for by the Mexican Drug Cartels and the Hispanic Ku Klux Klan
But, apparently, "it's all good".
The judge is right. Prosecuting an illegal alien for “conspiracy to smuggle aliens” when the only alien he conspired to smuggle is himself, is like prosecuting anyone possessing a joint for “conspiracy to sell drugs” because he conspired to have drugs sold to himself. (That’s the common-sense explanation for why these prosecutions were bogus; for the technical legal explanation, Google “Wharton’s Rule.”)
The courts are still open and running.
It seems felony trespass would be hard to beat as a charge.
Governor Brewer should step in? Someone should force this man off the bench....immigrants? Hardly! Paying to be smuggled into a foreign country makes that person a criminal...a crime against the Nation the smuggled person is entering and against Arizona immigration law in this case. Regardless, the tax payer gets stuck with the bill...one less pot hole will be filled....Social Justice Judges are to be feared.
Its human smuggling, not drug smuggling.
Several years ago the state lege made human smuggling a felony. Andrew Thomas was the Maricopa county attorney and he interpreted the new law in such a way that if an illegal paid a coyote to smuggle him into the country, then the illegal had entered into a conspiracy with the coyote to smuggle humans. This allowed Sheriff Joe to bust illegals for human smuggling.
Thomas, the Maricopa county attorney, was the only county attorney to interpret the law that way so Sheriff Joe was the only county sheriff in AZ doing it.
That caused a big uproar so Arpaio had to build a second tent jail to hold all these illegals and they did start prosecuting some of them for felonies. And the taxpayers were paying thru the nose.
Back in those days the immigration hardliners were trying felonize illegal entry, a misdemeanor.
sarc/
Why were they smuggling prosecutions? Couldn’t they find enough in their own town?
Next drug cartels smuggling in terrorists,the terrorists will be set free as they are only the customers and cartels will be sent back to bring more over.
——>“It was late 2011 or early 2012 when the leadership in U.S. Border Patrol put out a specific memo declaring that we could no longer check buses unless we had specific actionable intelligence indicating illegal aliens would be on certain avenues of transportation,” Moran explained. “Even though this was one of the most productive ways for us, they said Border Patrol was no longer allowed to do the checks.”
“The numbers are down because they are not allowing us to check the places where we know illegal aliens are,” he said.
Moran provided other examples, such as the leadership in Border Patrol actually altering the manner in which they record data. “Each station has an intel officer, they go out and they collect info on where people are crossing and how many. We look for footprints and such, the entire length of the border.”
“If we found footprints for 50 people, we would put that in the intel report and the numbers would be recorded,” he said. “Now if we put that number in, they reduce the number to thirty. They say things like ‘How do you know they didn’t get caught later?’ They try to cook the books to make it look like we are being more effective and less people are coming here.”
“Some of our advanced surveillance reveals that we are about 45% effective, meaning we are not even catching half of the illegal aliens or drug smugglers who enter our nation,” Moran claimed. “Now the politically-appointed leadership of U.S. Border Patrol and of U.S. Customs and Border Protection [BP’s parent agency] have effectively grounded that system of surveillance after the numbers did not match what their public numbers were.” He added that there have also been numerous sensors the bureaucrats have ordered turned off.
The shocking assertions from the National Border Patrol Council come just days after they released an explosive press release directed at their parent agency, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. The release included assertions that Border Patrol agents’ lives were being placed in jeopardy in order to appease “fringe” groups; that the U.S. Border Patrol and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency were keeping information from the public about the criminal histories of illegal aliens who make accusations against U.S. Border Patrol agents; and that the federal government was refusing to prosecute violent illegal aliens who attack U.S. law enforcement officers.
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