SB 1070: Why Obama Is Partly to Blame for the Racist Bill

The ACLU has suggested it will ask again for a Fourth Amendment injunction if the Supremes lift the earlier one. Whether this will work relies on what the justices decide. It's possible their ruling will make it harder for the ACLU to get a Fourth Amendment injunction from Bolton.

Gone are the days when we could count on the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal government to ensure that civil rights remain inviolate. Sadly, that concept seems as outdated as pet rocks and lava lamps.

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Nor can we rely on the feds to descend on Arizona like paratroopers on D-Day and save us from the authoritarian excesses of Sheriff Joe, or an Arizona GOP hellbent on keeping the brown down for as long as possible.

Nevertheless, after last week's oral arguments, folks on the left played the blame game, since the federal government's side took a serious beating.

Some blamed Verrilli, and some blamed the high court. Others took aim at easier targets, like the bigots who gave birth to the statute — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and recalled Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce.

However, I'd posit that there are two bad players in this madness. Foremost being President Barack Obama.

Why didn't the feds pursue a Fourth Amendment claim against 1070? Or a 14th Amendment claim involving racial profiling?

In part, because the feds are themselves often guilty of the same civil rights violations they accuse others of committing. It doesn't take an extensive Google search to find examples of U.S. citizens caught up in ICE's immigration dragnet, for example.

Going through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Arizona is instructive. If you're Anglo, you'll be waved through without a second glance. Latinos, whether citizens or not, can expect a delay, to say the least.

It's not just in Arizona. The ACLU recently filed a class-action lawsuit in Washington state, of all places, against the Border Patrol, alleging a pattern and practice of discriminatory policing.

Seems there's little for bored Border Patrol agents to do near the Canadian border, so they stop Hispanics continually. The case includes examples of two Latino citizens, each of whom was stopped and questioned on more than one occasion.

I know what the Dems out there are thinking. But, no, the Obama administration doesn't get a pass because the policies that have led to such profiling started in the previous administration.

Indeed, with former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano at the helm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, programs utilizing local cops as "force multipliers" in immigration enforcement, such as the 287(g) program and Secure Communities, have expanded, allowing Obama to deport more illegal immigrants in three years than George W. Bush did during his eight years as president. (Note: 287(g) is now being phased out in favor of S-Comm.)

Who gave Arpaio the largest force of 287(g)-trained officers in the country, empowered to enforce immigration law? Dubya. Who let Arpaio abuse that authority in the field through most of 2009 and in the jails up until late last year? Obama.

Moreover, how do you go to the court and argue that the feds own immigration enforcement, when DHS has been handing out the same authority willy-nilly with a program like Secure Communities, in which even those nabbed with piddling offenses are jacked up on immigration holds and deported?

"The federal government doesn't like [SB 1070]," Verrilli's foil, Paul Clement, correctly told the high court. "But they are very proud of their Secure Communities program . . . [which] makes clear that everybody's who's booked at participating facilities . . . eventually has their immigration status checked."

Verrilli contended that the states need a permission slip from the feds to enforce immigration law. A less-convincing line of reasoning is difficult to imagine.

Right out of the gate, Obama hired the Democratic governor of a viciously red state to be his DHS honcho, setting up a line of dominos that inevitably fell, resulting in a Republican governor signing 1070 into law.

Then, his administration doubled down on interior enforcement and the militarization of the border while assuring Latinos that Democrats would get around to comprehensive immigration reform one of these days.

Sure it will . . . When the Dems owned both houses of Congress, they punked out on comprehensive immigration reform. The Ds couldn't even make a moderate, broadly supported proposal like the DREAM Act a reality.

This time around, Obama's strategy is to demonize the easily demonizable GOP as a collection of Ku Klux Klan-wanna-bes and assure Hispanics, as he did in 2008, that he'll make comprehensive reform happen.

That seemed like a winning strategy until Republican U.S. Senator and vice presidential hopeful Marco Rubio began talking about a GOP-sponsored version of the DREAM Act.

Rubio's giving Obama some heartburn and may make the president compete for the Latino vote in November. This demonstrates that, as I argued in last week's column, the end of Mexican-hating policies in Arizona and the nation ultimately will be achieved via political means.

I'm not dissing the feds entirely. I'm happy they sought a 1070 injunction from Bolton on the grounds of preemption. "States rights" is code for institutionalized racism, from slavery up to and including Russell Pearce, and it must be opposed.