Arizona police officials warned officers not to use race or ethnicity when enforcing the state's new immigration law

PHOENIX Arizona police officials warned officers not to use race or ethnicity when enforcing the state’s new immigration law, saying that the country is watching their every move.In a new training video released Thursday, the officials said opponents of the law may secretly videotape officers making traffic stops, trying to ensnare them and prove that they’re racially profiling Hispanics.”Without a doubt, we’re going to be accused of racial profiling no matter what we do on this,” Tucson Police Chief Roberto Villasenor tells officers on the video from Arizona’s police licensing board. The video is designed to teach officers how to determine when they can ask a person for proof they’re in the country legally.Officers can consider that someone doesn’t speak English well, is wearing several layers of clothing in a hot climate or is hanging out in an area where illegal immigrants are known to look for work, according to the video.

They can take into account that a person doesn’t have identification, tried to run away, is traveling in an overcrowded vehicle, or seems out of place and unfamiliar with the area.But the stakes for making a mistake are high: Officers can be fired if they start asking questions because of a person’s race, then lie about it later, the video warns.”It is also clear that the actions of Arizona officers will never come under this level of scrutiny again,” said Lyle Mann, executive director of the training agency. “Each and every one of you will now carry the reputation for the entire Arizona law enforcement community with you every day.

“Arizona’s law, sparked by anger over a surging population of illegal immigrants in the border state, generally requires officers enforcing another law to question a person’s immigration status if there’s a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.Officers are told that the law applies only to a stop, detention or arrest – not when a person flags down an officer. Police are not required to ask crime victims or witnesses about their status, and anyone who shows a valid Arizona driver’s license is presumed to be in the country legally.The law restricts the use of race, color or national origin as the basis for triggering immigration questions.

But civil rights groups and some police officials argue that officers will still assume that illegal immigrants look Hispanic.Arizona’s 460,000 illegal immigrants are almost all Hispanic. Yet Arizona also has nearly 2 million Hispanics who are U.S. citizens or legal residents, about 30 percent of the state’s population.In the training video, an expert advises officers to ask themselves whether they’d reach the same conclusion about a Hispanic person’s immigration status if the subject were white or black.”If any officer goes into a situation with a previous mindset that one race or one ethnicity is not equal to another’s, then they have no business being a law enforcement officer in this state,” Arizona Police Association president Brian Livingston says in the video.

The video and supporting paperwork will be sent to all 170 Arizona police agencies.Police bosses will decide the best way to teach their forces. There is no requirement that all 15,000 Arizona police officers complete the training before the law takes effect July 29.Gov. Jan Brewer ordered the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board to develop the training when she signed the law April 23.Opponents have challenged the measure as unconstitutional and have asked that a federal court block it from taking effect. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton plans to hear arguments on the request later this month.

President Barack Obama on Thursday called the law an understandable byproduct of public frustration with the government’s inability to tighten the system, but also said it is ill-conceived, divisive and would put undue pressure on local authorities.

The law was passed in part with the lobbying muscle of unions representing rank-and-file police officers who argued that they should be allowed to arrest illegal immigrants they come across.It was opposed by police bosses who worried it would be expensive to implement and would destroy the trust they’ve developed in Hispanic neighborhoods. (AP)

PHOENIX,Lawsuits challenge new Arizona immigration law

PHOENIX  Anger mounted Thursday over an Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigration as a police officer filed one of the first lawsuits challenging the law and activists gathered outside an Arizona Diamondbacks game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, chanting “Boycott Arizona.”The lawsuit from 15-year Tucson police veteran Martin Escobar is one of two filed Thursday, less than a week after Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law that’s sparked fears it will lead to racial profiling despite the governor’s vow that officers will be properly trained.U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the federal government may challenge the law, which requires local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally, and makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally.Escobar, an overnight patrol officer in a heavily Latino area of Tucson, argues there’s no way for officers to confirm people’s immigration status without impeding investigations, and that the new law violates numerous constitutional rights.

Tucson police spokesman Sgt. Fabian Pacheco said Escobar is acting on his own, not on behalf of the department.The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders also filed a lawsuit Thursday, and is seeking an injunction preventing authorities from enforcing the law. The group argues federal law pre-empts state regulation of national borders, and that Arizona’s law violates due process rights by letting police detain suspected illegal immigrants before they’re convicted.

“Mexican-Americans are not going to take this lying down,” singer Linda Ronstadt, a Tucson native, said at a state Capitol news conference on another lawsuit planned by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center.At least three Arizona cities  Phoenix, Flagstaff and Tucson are considering legal action to block the law. In Flagstaff, police are investigating a threatening e-mail sent to members of the city council over their opposition to the law. The author said council members should be “arrested, tried in court, found guilty of treason and hanged from the nearest tree!”

About 40 immigrant rights activists gathered outside Wrigley Field in Chicago Thursday as the Cubs open a four-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A small plane toting a banner criticizing the law circled the stadium, and activist George Lieu said they’ve sent a letter to Cubs management asking them to stop holding spring training in Arizona.A Cubs spokesman declined to comment. Arizona manager A.J. Hinch says the team is there to play baseball.

On Wednesday, a group filed papers to launch a referendum drive that could put the law on hold until 2012, when voters could decide whether it is repealed.The legislation’s chief sponsor, Republican Rep. Russell Pearce, said he has no doubt voters will support the new law at the ballot box, which would then protect it from repeal by the Legislature. In Arizona, measures approved by voters can only be repealed at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, the effect of the law continued to ripple beyond Arizona.A group of conservative state lawmakers in Oklahoma are considering pushing a bill similar to Arizona’s. In Texas, Rep. Debbie Riddle, a Republican, said she will introduce a measure similar to the Arizona law in the January legislative session. And Republicans running for governor in Colorado and Minnesota expressed support for the crackdown. “I’d do something very similar” if elected,” Former Rep. Scott McInnis, told KHOW-AM radio in Denver.

Denver Public Schools is banning work-related travel to Arizona. Even though school employees are in the country legally, DPS spokesman Kristy Armstrong said officials don’t want them to be “subjected to that kind of scrutiny and search.Retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu also chimed in, saying he supports the idea of a boycott of Arizona businesses, according to a letter he wrote that was posted Wednesday onTheCommunity.com, a website for Nobel peace laureates that promotes peace and human rights.

“I recognize that Arizona has become a widening entry point for illegal immigration from the South … but a solution that degrades innocent people, or that makes anyone with broken English a suspect, is not a solution,” Tutu saidColombian singer Shakira planned to visit Phoenix on Thursday to meet with the city’s police chief and mayor over her concerns that the law would lead to racial profiling.(Ap)