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Grijalva invites Ashcroft to see vigilante 'justice'
Arizona Daily Star ^ | 14 Jan 2003 | Unkown

Posted on 01/14/2003 8:01:56 AM PST by JackelopeBreeder

Grijalva invites Ashcroft to see vigilante 'justice'

ARIZONA DAILY STAR; Tuesday, January 14, 2003

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva stepped up his campaign to crack down on vigilantes Monday by inviting Attorney General John Ashcroft to come to Southern Arizona to see the threat they pose to border security.

The Tucson Democrat told Ashcroft in a letter that the federal government's silence on the issue is "seen as giving official sanction to this racist movement, both by the perpetrators and victims of vigilante 'justice.' "

Ashcroft's voice, Grijalva added, "is needed now to make clear that private armed groups claiming law enforcement powers have no role in patrolling our border with Mexico."

Last week, shortly after he was sworn in, Grijalva called for a federal inquiry into the vigilante groups that have formed in response to the thousands of illegal immigrants who make their way across Arizona's border every year.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Government; Mexico; News/Current Events; US: Arizona
KEYWORDS: arizonaborder; illegalimmigration; vigilantes
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To: BlackElk
Ok dude, keep on watchin'

lol

You obviously correct. Anyone who wants to stop people from crossing our boarders illegally is racist and a beer guzzler. Never mind that they welcome immigrants of any race who come in legally with open arms.

You just keep on watching TV and believing what they show you to be the only truth. Just ignore the first hand accounts available to you.
461 posted on 01/17/2003 2:45:59 PM PST by CyberCowboy777 (Extremism in the Pursuit of Liberty is no Vice!)
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To: BlackElk
Since you are such a lay expert on the law, let's ask a practical question or more. Suppose that each and every "illegal" were apprehended, yea, even by legally constituted law enforcement and delivered over to duly constituted federal or state or county or municipal prosecution. Further presume that NO ONE pleads guilty. Won't you miss murder prosecutions? Burglary prosecutions? Rape prosecutions, because there won't be any more of those due to the need to process millions of cases of "illegal" immigration per year.

Since I’m a semi lay expert on Immigration law, I’ll answer the question.

Since the INS has it’s own prosecutors and Judges and court system, these cases will not tie up any other Local, State or Federal court. So all the other crimes will still be handled as usual.

The vast majority of these cases will be handled administratively, as provided by Immigration law, so the alien can plead not guilty all he wants, and never see a lawyer or judge.

Under the Immigration Law, most of these illegal would be charged with a violation of the INA (Immigration and Nationality Act) that does not allow the alien a lawyer or hearing. I’m the prosecutor, judge and jury, and I do this daily.

For those that are eligible for a hearing, they would pose a problem with detaining them and tying up the Immigration court system.

462 posted on 01/17/2003 2:46:59 PM PST by Marine Inspector
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To: dirtboy
I have no intention whatsoever of taking you even a teensy little bit seriously. It has been about 200 posts or so since you have maintained a civil keyboard and I don't take border obsessives seriously. What's more, I never will have to take them seriously. Why should I do what most Americans will not do and take y'all seriously. I am also not in the habit of taking orders or demands or commands from anyone much less you.

Lawyers get paid well for legal research. Hire one or act pro se.

Have another beer.

463 posted on 01/17/2003 2:47:26 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: MissAmericanPie
Define conservative, if you can.

I also expected no substantive response to the abortion problem.

Not as easy as you imagine, dear.

464 posted on 01/17/2003 2:50:22 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: dirtboy
I see ----I don't see how those groups can be operating illegally because they seem to be staying well within the law and Americans have a right to protect their private property. Those groups would be over-stepping if they were blocking highways or going onto private property without the owner's permission but that doesn't seem to be the case at all. To say the groups are operating illegally would mean Americans cannot be on US soil but that foreigners can freely invade the same US soil.
465 posted on 01/17/2003 2:50:45 PM PST by FITZ
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To: dirtboy
Just about everyone here is pro-life? As the nuns used to tell us, talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.
466 posted on 01/17/2003 2:52:00 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: dirtboy
Let me rephrase that - are there programs that encourage private citizens to report suspected illegal alients?

LOL, no.

Around the border areas just get your local Border Patrol office number and hope they are not busy when you call.

In the interior, get the local INS Criminal Investigators office number (it will be an answering machine) and leave a message. They will probable ignore it, but hey, at least you tried.

467 posted on 01/17/2003 2:54:12 PM PST by Marine Inspector
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To: dirtboy
Trespass is not a breach of the peace in most states. Unless you have a felony situation, and you decide that at your own civil peril and, also, since citizen's arrest is statutorily defined, at the peril of being charged with kidnapping or a lesser-included offense, you ought to proceed with extreme caution or you may be homeless at the end of your jail term. The law is what it is and not what you want it to be.
468 posted on 01/17/2003 2:56:10 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: dirtboy
Let me rephrase that - are there programs that encourage private citizens to report suspected illegal alients?

Speaking from Cochise County, I have never heard of any. They might be in existence, but they certainly aren't publicized.

469 posted on 01/17/2003 2:57:19 PM PST by JackelopeBreeder ("Push to test." <click> "Release to detonate.")
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To: Marine Inspector; dirtboy
Marine Inspector: See, we may have our disagreements, but you are not only a professional in the sense of being paid by government to do the work but also a professional in telling dirtboy what he needs to hear rather than what he wants to hear. Even when you might wish for tighter laws. This is reality.
470 posted on 01/17/2003 3:01:56 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: dirtboy
Gee, your acquaintances must see you as a class act.
471 posted on 01/17/2003 3:03:19 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: BlackElk
Look, you stated that if the Pope entered this country illegally (committing a criminal act, breaking the law, ect...), you would vote him not guilty.

Fine. They I asked you if the Pope was above the law. Again what crimes can the Pope commit and not be found guilty of.

Yes it is all hypothetical, but it is not silly. The question still stands. What crimes, is the Pope allowed to commit?

You stated that the Pope is above the law. So how far above the law is the Pope. What crimes can he commit?

I did not answer your previous question, because you know as well as I, that Congress would grant the request ASAP.

But that is not the point. The point is, you stated that the Pope is above the law, and I state he is not.

472 posted on 01/17/2003 3:09:26 PM PST by Marine Inspector
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To: dirtboy
I don't know what "unforward" means. The closest word would seem to be untoward. Yes, regardless of all those qualifications, the government is well-empowered to to ignore your demands and to choose, according to its own criteria (sensible or not) to enforce or not enforce any law. To the extent that you think you are empowered to order the government to obey your wishes as to the exercise of its discretion, your attitude is untoward. That is, you are impertinent in your powerlessness. Prosecutorial discretion is law. That is the way the law works. Ask any lawyer with a criminal practice and he or she will tell you about the existence and importance of prosecutorial discretion.

The insults have the usual effect: none.

473 posted on 01/17/2003 3:14:17 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: dirtboy
Nor should you. Pay for your own lawyer. It's a kind of unofficial union rule.
474 posted on 01/17/2003 3:16:07 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: Marine Inspector; dirtboy
We are having an unnecessary argument here. Under the overall circumstances of the AmChurch liberals and the publicizing (and a good and necessary publicizing I would say as a Catholic) of their craven behavior, some of us are a bit touchy as to suggestions of papal child molestation.

We have told each other what we believe as to how one should react to papal "crimes" against the United States. Neither is likely to change his mind. I might add that the pope is also the secular monarch of a foreign nation, Vatican City, whose diplomatic credentials have been fully accepted by the United States since Ronaldus Magnus was president. JP II also enjoys diplomatic immunity unlike the head of any other religion not because he is a religious leader but because he is a monarch.

I suspect that you were previously complaining to my reference to your lengthy posted table of national origins of "illegal" entrants caught at the Mexican border. I don't have the number of the post at my fingertips but I believe that I was responding to someone else who claimed that your table did more than it purported to do. In that circumstance, since there was nothing negative about you I would not feel compelled to ping you. I think I was then responding to your saying something to another poster to the effect that I must not have practiced criminal law, which, given that I have previously posted here that I practiced criminal law for twenty-five years, might be construed as calling me dishonest as to my prior profession (I am retired). For whatever it is worth, I don't think you intended not to inform me. I have been called on the failure to notify others under such circumstances. I try to call others on it as well.

In any event, the pope has diplomatic immunity which is the answer to your question. BUT, if I were examined for jury duty and asked whether his title would affect my vote, I would say yes. That is why God or the Founding Fathers or the Common Law invented challenges to potential jurors.

475 posted on 01/17/2003 3:35:09 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: dirtboy
Here's an interesting case ---but they've been arrested, I'm not sure what they were up to but they were operating in the border area.

Four indicted for impersonating officers

http://www.lcsun-news.com/Stories/0,1413,115%257E7444%257E1117259,00.html

They called real police for back up but apparently were arrested for enforcing the law.

476 posted on 01/17/2003 3:49:14 PM PST by FITZ
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To: Marine Inspector
Is it your experience that you can convict (criminally), without an Article III (federal judge of the ordinary sort) judge and with no jury and with no lawyer representing the accused and without even a hearing, any person and particularly a non-citizen of a federal crime?

If so, we have a lot worse problem with non-enforcement of law than immigration law. I suspect that you mean that you have some civil power under administrative law to exclude from the country people who are foreign nationals or to send back to their land of origin those who have illegally entered. Even that is highly questionable inder the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment but it would be yet another erosion of the rule of law.

These questions are posed respectfully and not argumentatively.

The fact remains, in any event that resources get tied up and particularly if incarceration is possible. If those crossing the border determine to take whatever consequences are dished out, their entry is still essentially unstoppable. As you have said elsewhere, if someone calls INS criminal enforcement, they will get an answering machine and likely no action.

Also, please clarify your last sentence, if you will. Do you mean that the volume of cases even in the INS courts would tie up the system?

Finally, I think you suggested previously that the government would not encourage private groups to act to enforce laws that the government itself does not want enforced. If so, is that not a concession that, at least, the government lacks the political will to act to enforce the immigration laws strictly?

477 posted on 01/17/2003 3:54:31 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: FITZ
Thank you for a post that demonstrates the reality.
478 posted on 01/17/2003 3:59:37 PM PST by BlackElk (Viva Cristo Rey)
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To: BlackElk
You are a hoot. Tell ya what, give me something substative on the topic of the thread and then we can talk about how much we both are againt abortion.

Define "conservative"? OK. A responsible citizen of the United States who realizes his/her obligation to uphold, safeguard, and pass on the Constitution of the United States of America to future generations. And demands that government adhere to the limitations of power placed on it by said document, while upholding and obeying the demands that the Constitution places on it, such as to protect us from invasion.
479 posted on 01/17/2003 4:27:27 PM PST by MissAmericanPie
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To: FITZ
They called real police for back up but apparently were arrested for enforcing the law.

IMO they are pretty stupid. Only an idiot would break one law to enforce another.

480 posted on 01/17/2003 5:29:37 PM PST by Marine Inspector
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