http://www.jonlowder.com/2008/06/random-stop.html
Just drove home from a birthday party near Pittsboro, NC. As we were driving north on NC-87 we encountered a road block being manned by sheriff’s deputies and state troopers about 14 miles south of I-40. They were checking everyone’s IDs and either letting them through or pulling them to the shoulder. I thought maybe it was a DUI checkpoint or an effort to nab people whose inspection stickers were expired, but then I noticed that all the cars being pulled over had Hispanic passengers. They also barely looked at my ID before wishing me a nice day and I could swear the deputy never looked at my windshield.
Now I’m wondering if we were in one of the counties mentioned in Sen. Dole’s campaign ad that features sheriff’s praising her for securing funding from a federal program that enables local law enforcement to identify illegal immigrants in their jails and have them deported. I’m not sure, but I don’t think the program allows locals to act like ICE agents and go out and find illegals, rather they are to use it to I’d illegals who have already commited a crime, well other than immigrating illegally.
My gut tells me we were seeing an NC version of an immigration sweep and the road block was a pretense to find illegals committing a crime. Me thinks a lot of those cars are going to be found to have broken tail lights or some such thing.
Of course it could just have been a coincidence that all the folks who were pulled over when we passed by were Hispanic. Or that all the Hispanics had some kind of problem with a license, or title, or tags, or stickers or something. And yes ther could be some other explanation, nut my gut tells me it was a roadblock specifically set up for illegals
Oh, and don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with deporting illegal immigrants (don’t get me started on our screwy immigration system though), but I don’t know if this type of activity would be an appropriate use of the federal funding. Please do correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the Feds are pretty territorial about immigration enforcement. I’m thinking they wouldn’t be too happy if they found out that local sheriffs were proactively pursuing illegals Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry