Arizona’s Controversial Law – By Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.
Filemon Zamora, Ph.D.
One of the features of Arizona’s controversial law SB 1070 – detaining an individual based on “reasonable” suspiciousness of being an illegal alien – is not something new. That – being detained for looking “Mexican” -has happened to me all my life in the United States since I immigrated in 1973.
The first disagreeable experience I had with the Border Patrol was a few months after I immigrated to the United States. I was working with another Mexican worker (100% of agricultural workers, especially doing low skills jobs in the Southwest are Mexican and the language spoken is Spanish). We were irrigating a cotton field when a vehicle of the Border Patrol approached us. There was only one officer. He proceeded to ask us about our legal residency status. We showed our documents and for some reason – I never knew why – he suspected my “green card’ -resident alien card – was fake and he put me on the back of his vehicle (a portable jail) and took me all the way to the headquarters of the Border Patrol in Blythe, California – we were in Palo Verde, about 30 miles from there. I was away for several hours. Imagine how my father felt when he was told I was taken away by the Border Patrol (I was not eighteen years old yet and we were away from home in México, – incidentally I was working for John Norton Farms; I found out years later when I took a sociology class in college that the owner – John Norton – had been U.S. Secretary of Agriculture; of course he had “illegal aliens” working for him). The most outrageous of these experiences is that the Border Patrol treats you as if you were not a human being. He brought me back without an apology.
When I moved to San Diego, California I used to work downtown and every time they saw me walking in the streets I knew for sure they were going to ask me about my legal status. Often they would call me over from their vehicle using their finger to approach them. Sometimes I would be walking in the street when someone would tap my shoulder and I would turn back with a smile to find out that my greeting would be answered with “Federal agent, what’s your citizenship?”
My entire experience living in California, Arizona, Oregon and now in Texas has been to remind me that I am exposed to being questioned for looking “Mexican”; you see the problem is the skin. One time when I was driving to L.A. I was surprised the problem was not the skin. That day the Border Patrol check point in San Clemente was closed, so my friend and I followed the flow of vehicles, but in a few minutes we were detained by the Border Patrol. It occurred to me to ask the officer why us. He did not say because we looked Mexican; rather he said “we saw you looked scared”. Maybe he was right. I’ve been traumatized for so many years by the Border Patrol that now in every check point there’s an expression of terror in my face.
Going back to the law SB 1070 of Arizona, supposedly the only thing new about it, is that now not only the Border Patrol can stop you but the police and other state enforcement law agencies if reasonable doubts exist of someone being illegal in the U.S. Actually this has been going on for some time already but now it will be made official.
Editor’s Note: On Wednesday, July 28,2010, U. S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked key portions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, including a provision requiring a police officer to determine the immigration status of a person detained or arrested if the officer believed the person was not in the country legally. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she will file an appeal to reinstate the blocked provisions.
