For those of you who read the previous story on my blog, it ran on A1 of today's Arizona Republic, above the fold. I beat the state's largest newspaper by just half a day. Regardless of who broke the story, I'm glad it got some attention.
The employee whose e-mail I posted is Ramon Delgadillo, a translator for the county court system. And to answer the questions I posed in the blog, Sheriff Joe has said that nobody so far has been caught and/or deported for trying to visit a county jail (the screening did just start, but if nobody is caught, then why are we doing this? And more importantly, do immigrants really come to America, legally or illegally, so they can visit people in jail?). Moreover, as I expected, if you claim to be a natural born citizen, you do not have to show any proof of this claim to be admited to visit the jail. If you claim to be a naturalized citizen, however, you must document it with your ID number, when you became naturalized, etc. Who knows what permanent (legal) resident aliens have to show. My question is why not make everybody show proof that they are here legally to enter a jail? Otherwise, how is the law enforced without racial profiling, by people who likely can't tell an Apache from an Iraqi? I have met people who speak flawless American English who are in our country illegally. And I know people who were born and raised in this country, but for whom English is a second language. So how do we know when to take people's word for what box they check if we don't check everyone's birth certificate or naturalization papers? Wouldn't this program work much more effectively if we did, or is this program not as much about catching illegal immigrants as it is about catching headlines, Sheriff?
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