EthnicMajority

(Fox Phoenix) Controversy always follows Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration raids, and now one of them is proving costly.

Maricopa County has agreed to pay out $200,000 dollars to two men who were caught up in one raid.

They were detained along with others who were in the country illegally — the only problem is — they weren't illegal immigrants.

This stems back to an incident that took place two years ago, on Feb. 11, 2009. Julian Mora and his son Julio claim their civil rights were violated when they were stopped and detained during that illegal immigration raid.

A federal court judge ruled that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office violated the 4th Amendment in stopping and arresting the Moras, and Thursday, the two received compensation.

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(Fox Sports) Major league players still oppose Arizona's controversial immigration law, though their union boss said not to expect any boycott of Tuesday's All-Star Game.

"Our nation continues to wrestle with serious issues regarding immigration, prejudice and the protection of individual liberties," Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Michael Weiner said in a statement released on Friday. "Those matters will not be resolved at Chase Field, nor on any baseball diamond; instead they will be addressed in Congress and in statehouses and in courts by those charged to find the right balance among the competing and sincerely held positions brought to the debate."

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law in April 2010, legislation that sought to give state law enforcement officers authority to enforce immigration law. But lawsuits — including one led by the Department of Justice — have kept key provisions of the law from being implemented.

That's good enough for the MLBPA, which railed against SB 1070 a year ago and said it would take "additional steps necessary to protect the rights and interests of our members." About a quarter of major league players are Hispanic.

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(Fox Sports) With Major League Baseball's All-Star Game less than two weeks away, Hispanic groups outraged over Arizona's attempt to crack down on illegal immigrants are pressing players and fans to sit out this year's spectacle, FOXNews.com reported Saturday.

Even though the state's controversial immigration law has been put on hold by the federal courts, opponents say a boycott is still a good idea.

"We just encourage everyone who opposes racism and discrimination, think about children separated from families, to come out and stand in solidarity with all the children," boycott organizer Anayanse Garza told myFOXphoenix.com.

Arizona's crackdown, which would allow police officers to check the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally, drew national attention when it was first signed into law in April 2010. Critics said it would lead to unconstitutional racial profiling, while supporters argued the state is helping federal authorities who aren't doing their job in enforcing immigration law at the border.

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(NY Daily News) Latino activists accused U.S. Senator John McCain of “fanning the flames” of intolerance Saturday after he blamed illegal immigrants for some of the massive wildfires sweeping Arizona.

In a press conference after touring the scorched fire-damaged areas, the former presidential candidate said “there is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who crossed our border illegally.”

In addition to following forest maintenance measures, McCain said a solution to future fires would be a “secure border” to keep immigrants from coming into the US and setting campfires.

“They have set fires because they want to signal others. They have set fires to keep warm and they have set fires in order to divert law enforcement agents and agencies from them,” he said Saturday.

A U.S. Forest Service official told CNN on Sunday that while the widespread blaze was believed to have been caused by one “escaped campfire,” there was no reason to believe illegal immigrants were behind it.

McCain’s comments infuriated Latino leaders who called them baseless and inflammatory.

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(Examiner.com) Phoenix Latino civil rights groups Chicanos Unidos Arizona, Take Back Aztlán, and Nuestros Reconquistos are very happy that the United States Supreme Court has decided that undocumented migrants can be eligible for in-state tuition. This will be eligible for all three groups to continue with their in-state scholarship program for undocumented Latinos.

“We have an annual $10,000 scholarship that many politicians and educational leaders contribute to,” says Jorge Serrano of Take Back Aztlán. “However, without in-state tuition rates, this scholarship wouldn’t even be possible.”

“It is only fair that many young Latinos who have attended the same high school for years be allowed in-state tuition rates. This is great news,” says Cecilia Maldonado of Chicanos Unidos Arizona.

(Washington Post) Colombian singer Shakira was honored Saturday by Harvard University for her artistic and humanitarian work. She later said some U.S. states’ proposed anti-immigrant legislation goes against her foundation’s efforts to provide education to poor people around the world.

The Grammy Award-winning singer, however, said Latino immigrants in the U.S. facing various anti-immigrant bills will have “justice” as public awareness about their plight grows.

“Justice will come. I’m sure,” Shakira told The Associated Press after the award ceremony. “Wherever there is … a kid, who could be the son and the daughter of a Latino immigrant, who cannot attend a school in the United States of America, that kid should be a concern to all of us and our responsibility.”

Shakira made the comments in an interview when asked about proposed measures in Arizona and elsewhere targeting illegal immigrants. A bill in Arizona, for example, would bar illegal immigrants from attending public schools, living in public housing or driving. Another bill seeks to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. if their parents are illegal immigrants.

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(ABC News) “What Would You Do?” decided to travel to Arizona. We installed our hidden cameras at BK Carne Asada and Hotdogs, a popular restaurant in Tucson, and hired actors to portray an off-duty security guard and a Latino customer. Later, host John Quinones, who is Hispanic, went undercover to see how restaurant patrons would react when he was the one facing racial profiling. (See the next page for more on Quinones’ undercover work.)

In our first scenario, the security guard approaches the actor playing the Latino customer moments after he enters the restaurant.

“You got any ID on you? Documentation? Papers?” he asks. “Are you visiting? Do you understand a little English?”

At first, people who seem to notice what’s going on just stare nervously at the two men. But within a few minutes, a man charges up and confronts the security guard.

“Excuse me, who are you? Do you work here?” asks the man.

“No, I’m a security guard, I just stopped in to get some food,” replies the guard. “I’m just trying to be a good American.”

“I wouldn’t say you’re a good American. I’d say you’re an ass!” yells the man.

What our actor playing the security guard was doing — racial profiling — was exactly what some argue would happen under the new immigration law.

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(American Progress) A handful of local communities across our nation enacted unconstitutional, discriminatory, and costly immigration controls in recent years in an effort to chase away undocumented immigrants and their families and friends, many of whom are American citizens. This growing backlash against Hispanic immigrants in particular was driven by fear, economic uncertainty, and cultural differences in these localities: small towns in New Jersey, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Texas, and one county in Virginia.

Against the backdrop of a slowly recovering economy, high unemployment, falling state and local tax revenues due to the Great Recession, and a host of problems ranging from crime to overcrowded schools, Hispanic immigrants proved to be handy scapegoats for the white majority of citizens in these communities. Never mind that these immigrants—legal and undocumented—are neither the root cause of any of these problems nor a major factor in any of them.

Arizona, of course, drew the most attention for its law, S.B. 1070, which requires police to question the legal status of suspects when there is “reasonable suspicion” they are undocumented immigrants. The law also sets “attrition through enforcement” as Arizona’s official immigration policy, which in plain English means if the laws are harsh enough, immigrants will flee in fear. The state’s immigration control measure has not been enforced, however, because a federal judge put a hold on the new law pending the outcome of a lawsuit in which the U.S. Department of Justice challenged Arizona’s attempts to usurp federal jurisdiction of immigration matters.

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(Miami Herald) An Arizona-style immigration reform bill filed by state Sen. Mike Bennett will lead to racial profiling of Hispanics and cost Florida billions, civil rights activists told the Manatee County legislative delegation Tuesday.

Bradenton attorney C.J. Czaia and county Democratic Executive Committee Chairman Richard O’Brien urged Bennett and six other state legislators to reject proposals that allow police to demand citizenship documentation while enforcing other laws.

Czaia, an American citizen raised in what is now Sri Lanka, said Bennett’s bill would encourage racial profiling by giving law enforcement the power to seek citizenship papers for “reasonable suspicion.”

That could ensnare people just because they have brown skin or speak Spanish, he said.

It would lead potential tourists from Mexico, Central America and South America to abandon Florida as a destination and cripple businesses that depend on immigrant labor, according to Czaia.

(Huffington Post) Mary Rose Wilcox, a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in Arizona, was sitting in her car on Saturday when her husband called her back into their restaurant. Inside, he pointed to the television, where news stations were reporting that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 20 others had been shot in what police are now calling an assassination attempt.

Wilcox said she was devastated. She also said she was frightened: Wilcox herself was shot in 1997, while walking out of a board meeting, by a man who later said he was angry at her support for a baseball stadium tax. The first Hispanic woman elected to the board, Wilcox, a Democrat, had been the target of talk-radio tirades telling Maricopa County residents to “take her out.”

“I knew at the time that the hate had been caused by a lot of the rhetoric that had gone on,” Wilcox told HuffPost. “At the trial, the man actually said, ‘I shot her because the radio said I should take her out.’”

When she heard what happened to Giffords, she said, she felt a tinge of familiarity. “That’s what we have come to,” Wilcox said. “If you disagree with someone in Arizona, you demonize them.”

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