Excuse me but, in the Arizona suit, isn't the Obama administration taking the position that a person's legal status isn't local law enforcement's business?
In which case, wouldn't it have been up to the Leal creep to shout "Hey, I'm an illegal! Get me the Mexican counsel."
Wonder if ol' Eric can explain the dichotomy...
The treaty is implemented with the assumption that the local authorities can easily tell if a person is a foreign national. The treaty doesn’t consider that a person may have been raised in a country, effectively an native in every way but legalities, and the officials are supposed to somehow magically know that the person is a foreign national. The reason is that the treaty assumes no laws are being broken prior to the arrest. It assumes a foreign national would be in another country legally, or would at least let the officials know he was a foreign national. At that point the officials would know they’re supposed to inform him of his right to contact his consulate. It didn’t consider someone would spring a “I’m a foreign national” surprise last minute.
I’m all for implementing legislation here. However, the requirement for notification of rights under the treaty should be contingent upon the police knowing or having reasonable suspicion that the suspect is a foreign national.
The funny thing here is that they basically have to implement profiling in order to protect the rights of foreign nationals. “Yes, he was wearing full Arab garb, had a long beard and spoke with a heavy Arabic accent, but we’re not supposed to profile people so we didn’t inform him of his rights.”