Thread: NC, Paul Cuadros: Profiling just got easier

Paul Cuadros
Two months ago I was on my way to the Sunday soccer pickup game in Pittsboro with my friend Francisco. It was a beautiful, cool, sunny afternoon, and so we wore our sunglasses as I drove to the elementary school where people gather from all over Chatham County to play.
As I passed the courthouse circle, I spotted one of Pittsboro's finest in my rear view mirror.

Francisco and I both knew instantly what was going to happen. We were two Hispanic men in dark sunglasses on a slow Sunday afternoon. A wave of emotions flowed over me: from anger to frustration to resignation.

The police car followed me for at least a mile and through four turns and finally hit his lights when I pulled into the school for our game. Francisco, who sports a military-style haircut, flashed a smile and shook his head and said, "Driving while brown."

The federal immigration program 287 (g) has been in the news lately in both Orange and Chatham counties. This is the program that trains county sheriff's deputies to check the immigration status of every person taken into custody. Its use has become controversial because some immigrant rights and Latino groups say it leads to racial profiling by those deputies. If you have never been racially profiled, then you don't know how much control it takes to restrain your anger over the violation of your civil liberties.

The program now adds an extra level of suspicion in the already suspicious minds of some law enforcement officers when it comes to Latinos. Now instead of just asking for my license and registration I might have to answer questions about my legal status. If I forget to bring my driver's license, I might be on a bus to a detention center.

How do you prove you are a U.S. citizen in your car? What documents do you bring in your Ford to prove you were born here? Officers see all kinds of fake IDs. How do you convince someone who has just stopped you and questioned you and is suspicious of you?

With the power of 287 (g), deputies may take Latino U.S. citizens into custody under the guise of checking their immigrant status back at the jail. A small infraction that would never result in an arrest, like forgetting your driver's license, can have immense consequences.

This is the pernicious thing behind 287 (g) and its little brother, the "Secure Communities" program. Citizenship questions are only asked because of the way you look or the way you sound. My father was a naturalized U.S. citizen but never lost his Spanish accent. It's a free country, but freer for some more than others.

There are many in Orange and Chatham who think that profiling doesn't happen now. They are wrong. I cannot tell how many times over the past several years I have gone through license checkpoints in Siler City driving a soccer kid home from a game. The checkpoints would be set up right in front of his neighborhood, which is predominantly Latino.

When you're stopped by the police, you go through a mental checklist to find what it is you did wrong to get pulled over. I wasn't driving fast; the courthouse circle prevents that. And I didn't miss any stop signs or lights, again the circle. I hadn't had a ticket in three years, my license was just renewed and my registration, plates and vehicle test were up to date.

After asking for my license and registration and keeping me and Francisco waiting for what seemed an unusually long time to check my information, the young cop walked up and leaned down to tell me why he had stopped me. He said my license plate monthly sticker had faded. The year was fine, new in fact, but the month was hard to see. He just wanted to let me know that. I knew exactly what he wanted me to know.

Paul Cuadros is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC. Contact him at pcuadros@mindspring.com.

http://www.chapelhillnews.com/news/story/41670.html

BS - I don't buy it Mr Cuadros - you are spinning, you are peddling falsehood, you have no proof the officer was profiling you. My Father is Greek and "brown" and had the officer stopped him the same way you were stopped what would you have said, he was stopped because he was "brown" therefore Hispanic? Nonsense!

And as far as illegals are concerned, over 80% are Hispanics so what are we supposed to do, let them go otherwise we are anti Hispanic? Insane!

alamb wrote:

BS - I don't buy it Mr Cuadros - you are spinning, you are peddling falsehood, you have no proof the officer was profiling you.

You're right, alamb. I often wonder how many of these stories are complete fabrications.

OK I had to add to my original post and have E-mailed it to the author of this CRAP! This is it:

I'm a 53 year old white American and have been driving since I was 16. I have never driven a car without my drivers license! I have been 'followed' by patrol cars on more than a few occasions. Yes that is nerve racking, so what. I have been stopped and ticketed more times than I care to remember. Less than 6 months ago I was ticketed for not wearing my seat-belt, (reason being I was driving in reverse just be for I was stopped) in an all Chinese neighborhood could I cry racism? I once was stopped and ticketed because one of my tail-lights wasn't working, did I cry? No I paid the ticket and got the light fixed.

I'm so tired of these BS stories. The simple fact is there is an Illegal Alien invasion going on and many Americans want it stopped! I suggest to you, a Legal Immigrant, that you write an article asking those that are breaking our immigration laws to cease and desist from doing so as it is making life harder for the Legal Immigrants (whom I welcome) in this country.

Agree, Ratbstard! It is not racial profiling. And who knows if there had been an APB issued to look for a certain type of vehicle with two Hispanic males inside that had just shot up a liquor store. Why the fear of you are not guilty? That sort of fear is unfounded in American citizens who abide by the law. The rising problem has been the huge influx of illegals of the Hispanic persuasion, the most blatant and with the loudest voices screaming for rights.
At a gas station, I saw a mother grab two kids to her because there was a police car parked there. All three kept staring as they walked by, and I see no other reason than Mom was here illegally and she was passing her fear of la migra onto her young ones. Wrong lesson if the kids were anchor babies. I think racial profiling by police is horsecrap.

UMMM seems to me maybe you should be mad at the illegals who are making it hard for you in the United States, if we did not have the illegal problem you would not look suspicious...If what you are saying is even true!

Originally Posted by SOSADFORUS

UMMM seems to me maybe you should be mad at the illegals who are making it hard for you in the United States, if we did not have the illegal problem you would not look suspicious...If what you are saying is even true!

Exactly! This guy is barking up the wrong tree. He should be focusing his energies on the 'brown' illegal aliens who are the root cause of his problem.

Hey, if it were white, green-eyed, red-head, illegal foreigners invading the country, stealing jobs, killing, molesting, running the economy in the ground, I wouldn't take issue with law enforcement AT ALL for having to defend my citizenship if it meant cleaning up the mess my look-alikes were causing. I would be barking at the heels of the ROOT CAUSE- the ILLEGALS.

Profiling--- the biggest farce of pro-immigration activists. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and has feathers--it is profiling in America today to call it a duck. First you have to call A MALDUCK representative, then a La Goosa representative. Then a lawyer from ACHOO, (God bless you), pesters the police about the ducks civil rights. The duck that works at the local newspaper, then writes an article about how all the ducks want, is to come and lay eggs peacefully and to eat the pond food that American ducks do not want.

They never discuss how they bring substances harmful to American ducklings or how they, very often , molest the smallest of ducklings. They never discuss how the overcrowd the local pond and destroy it for American ducks. The whole time they are protected by big fat American geese who profit by the fact that the illegal ducks do not erequire as much feed to sustain them, leaving more feed for the fat geese themselves.

--but the American ducks are chased away and derided if they notice that these ducks that flew in illegally are of a different appearance than them.

They are working on a law now to force cross breeding so that all ducks are the same appearance. Next year we start on cats.

PS Do you ever notice what the fat geese leave all over the lawns by those ponds????

---- and, oh yeah!! Thery do have noticeably different feathers and sizes, but , by golly, you are not allowed, ever, to notice that!!!

I got a reply E-mail from Paul:

In a message dated 2/15/2009 8:08:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, pcuadros@mindspring.com writes:

Greetings. Thank you for your letter. I do appreciate it. I read it with interest and found that no where in
your response did you approach being profiled, instead you were pulled over for infractions of the law and
rightfully so.
The point of the column is that no one who is a U.S. citizen should have their citizenship questioned under the 287g program. I am sure you would be upset too if some police officer asked you if you were
a U.S. citizen in your own country! So, why would you visit the same inglory on me? I am not an immigrant but a U.S. citizen, which proves my point. People like yourselves look at Latinos and don't see a U.S. citizen, you see a stereotype--an immigrant. I was born here, same as you. All I ask is that I be treated same as you.

As for illegal immigrants I have written plenty about them. Migration is a terrible thing that divides families, humilates
migrants, exploits them and can result in their deaths. I am not in support of it. I am in support of an orderly system
that works, which is not the system we currently have. 287g is yet another failed policy that we have to pay for in
more ways than just tax dollars. I wish you well.

Paul

Here's my response:

Thank You for responding Paul,

Oh but I was profiled. I grew my hair long in 68, wore bell bottoms and yes I smoked pot. With the blessing of the public at large all of us 'hippies' were profiled and constantly harassed by the police. To us it was just a fact of life. Whenever stopped I had to produce legal identification, identification that I believe proved I was a citizen.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there are laws on the books that allow for anybody to be detained if they cannot produce such identification

I apologize for my misconception that you were an immigrant. I should have said "the child of a Legal Immigrant." Please forgive me for the error as writing is not my profession. I am an unemployed construction worker here in NYC. One who sees Illegal Aliens of several ethnicity's (Chinese, Russian, Polish, Irish and yes Hispanic) working in construction for unfair wages and in unsafe circumstances. This is having a direct negative effect on my life. I believe the immigration status of them all should be checked.

You state that the 287(g) program is a failed policy. I must ask how you came to this conclusion? It seems to me that your status was verified without a problem. So it did not fail you.

Let me say in closing that I admire your writing style but not the argument you made with it. I find your argument flawed and based more on emotion than fact.

Sincerely Yours, Jeff

Very good Ratbstard