An interesting story appeared in Tacoma’s The News Tribune on February 15, 2017. A routine driver’s license check by a Washington State trooper at the scene of a multi-car accident revealed a man, Armando Chavez Corona, who was a deported felon convicted of a drug charge. A trooper then notified ICE and two hours later ICE agents arrived to take the man into custody.
Ironically, the state trooper making the call to ICE may be in as much hot water as Mr. Corona. The Washington State Patrol is investigating the officer for not following department guidelines about not detaining or questioning people based on immigration status.
Mr. Corona presents an intriguing case. According to ICE spokeswoman Rose Richeson, he was a “previously deported criminal with an aggravated felony conviction for possession of a controlled substance and a conviction in the U.S. District Court for illegal re-entry. He was removed to Mexico on four separate occasions between 1996 to 2000.”
What of the state guidelines in question? The so-called protocols pronounce that the agency will not “not stop, detain or interrogate or place an immigration hold on any person solely for the purpose of ascertaining immigration status or in any other way attempt to enforce federal immigration laws.” The troopers at the scene didn’t detain or otherwise question Mr. Corona. Corona had to wait at the crash site for cars to be cleared. While waiting, ICE arrived to take Mr. Corona into custody.
Now, what if Mr. Corona was a citizen? What if a routine driver’s license check revealed an outstanding FBI notification of him to be a person of interest in a federal matter? Local law enforcement would have taken him into custody in a heartbeat.
The only consequential difference in the two scenarios is the real “undocumented” status of Mr. Corona in the first and his hypothetical status as a citizen in the second. In the real story, the “undocumented” Mr. Corona has a halo of protection from federal arrest as a result of Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D) declaration that state and local law enforcement are not to be “mini-immigration agencies”. Mr. Corona has greater legal protections in the state of Washington as an illegal resident than as a citizen.
Certainly, residents of the state of Washington who happen to be citizens wouldn’t evade the federal hammer. How does this comport with our veneration for the constitutional principle of “equal protection”? Equal protection requires the government to guarantee the same rights, protections, and privileges to all citizens. Apparently, the non-citizen designation of “undocumented” by the state of Washington means a greater level of protection, not equal protection. Eschewing the “citizen” label while violating our immigration laws perversely means a higher status than the lowly citizen.
Citizens get hauled away by the feds as the “undocumented” receive sanctuary. We have most certainly entered the pretzel logic world of Alice’s Wonderland of the Sanctuary City.
RogerG
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