What We Can Learn from Mexico

This article was originally published in the Fayetteville Observer.
 
It is ironic that the same good police work that led to the arrest of Cesar Laurean in Mexico would be frowned upon as “profiling” if employed here in North Carolina. Laurean is wanted for the December 2007 murder of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach. Laurean was captured on April 10, 2008, in the small Mexican town of Tacambaro. The Fayetteville Observer described the details of the arrest as follows:
 
“Police carrying out an anti-kidnapping operation stopped Laurean as he wandered on a street because they thought he looked suspicious.
 
“When they realized he didn’t speak Spanish well, they became even more suspicious. After running his name through a computer – and recognizing his distinctive tattoos – they realized Laurean was wanted in the United States on charges in Lauterbach’s death.”
 
Let’s review what happened:
 
1) Laurean, a native of Mexico, is stopped by police because he “looks suspicious”
2) The police become even more suspicious once they learn Laurean does not speak Spanish very well
3) Laurean’s name is run through a computer that can confirm his identity and whether he has any outstanding warrants
4) Laurean is arrested and will likely be deported to the United States, where he will be charged with Lauterbach’s murder
 
If Laurean had been an illegal alien here in the United States it is unlikely he would have been stopped at all – not simply for “looking suspicious,” and certainly not for not being able to speak our native language very well. Doing so would be labeled as “profiling,” at least by such organizations as the ACLU and El Pueblo. Indeed, these groups go so far as to argue that attempting to verify the legal presence of a suspect who has already been stopped for committing a crime could easily degenerate into racial or ethnic profiling. Argues El Pueblo, “Because it is left to the discretion of officers to determine who is a potential undocumented immigrant, there could easily be an increase in the use of racial profiling as a means to ‘determine’ who to question as a possible undocumented immigrant.” Along these lines, the ACLU of North Carolina asserts that the 287g program “arguably results in increased racial profiling by officers on the street.”
 
The 287g program, which has already been implemented in three counties in North Carolina, provides local law enforcement with the training and authority to investigate immigration violations. To be clear, the law does not give local police the power to make immigration arrests; they already possess this power and always have. More than anything, the 287g program empowers local law officers to use federal immigration law as a tool in dealing with criminal illegal aliens.
 
Critics of the 287g program argue that most 287g arrests are for misdemeanors, with averages ranging from 80 percent to 95 percent, depending on county. These ranges are in line with the misdemeanor rate for legal citizens in North Carolina. And without getting into the much-disputed question of whether crime rates for illegal aliens are higher than for legal citizens, the only point we want to make here is that confirming the legal presence and identity of a person stopped for breaking the law is not racial profiling. Oftentimes, as Mexican police found with Cesar Laurean, it is simply good police work. This is even the case when a suspect has only been pulled over for a routine traffic violation, as were four of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers – Mohammed Atta, Nawaf al Hazmi, Hani Hanjour, and Ziad Jarrah. In all four instances, local law enforcement could have arrested the terrorists for immigration violations. In Mexico, they would have.