Worth Reading Deportation Law Proposed for Ohio Butler County Wants to Arrest Undocumented Individuals The Cleveland Plain Dealer/Associated Press October 25, 2005 Hamilton, Ohio- Officials in Butler County, where the Hispanic population has grown by 500 percent since 1990, said they hope to enact a state trespassing law for illegal immigrants. State Rep. Courtney Combs, a Fairfield Republican, is working up a proposal that would charge illegal immigrants with state trespassing when they are arrested or pulled over for traffic violations. It would call for immediate deportation, an authority currently reserved for federal judges. Combs, County Commissioner Mike Fox and Sheriff Rick Jones contend that federal resources are stretched too thin to adequately police the region's ballooning immigrant population. "We have to start dealing with it ourselves," Jones said. But the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency responds to reported illegal immigration and does indeed have the resources to deal with the cases, said Greg Palmore, an agency spokesman. Fox said the trespassing proposal and other new policies aimed at illegal aliens make up for "stupid political correctness" that has kept the federal government from addressing immigration issues. "My theory is that if you're too stupid to learn how to say, 'I want a beer,' in English, you're too stupid to drink to begin with," Fox said, alluding to a Mason bar with a sign that reads, "For Service Speak English." The proposal could open the door to racial profiling, said Gary Daniels, litigation coordinator for the Ohio American Civil Liberties Union, adding that policies prohibiting profiling are often ineffective. A similar law was passed in New Hampshire, but in August a judge ruled that police could not use it against immigrants. "For very good reason, police agencies throughout the country have worked very hard to make positive inroads into their local immigrant communities," Daniels said. "This proposal could create a culture of mistrust and fear that would impede police investigations which rely on obtaining information from those communities." The county's Hispanic population has grown faster than that of other counties in the region. It jumped more than 43 percent to nearly 7,000 people between 2000 and 2004. Fox said the measures aren't meant to target Hispanics, although he acknowledged that 90 percent of the country's illegal immigrants are from Mexico. "This isn't about stopping immigration or preventing people from coming here to live the American dream," he said. "This isn't an attack on any particular ethnic group. This is about national security and the federal government's failure to act." TOP