Friday, April 13, 2007
News Immigration law already raises questions
Posted by Alyssa Abkowitz on Fri, Apr 13, 2007 at 6:48 PM
The Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials has called for an investigation into the arrest of a Canadian tourist who was detained for a minor traffic violation in South Georgia.
According to an article in the Ottawa Citizen, a 23-year-old female was driving to Florida when police pulled her over for running a stop sign and speeding. Even though she had a valid Canadian passport, she was taken to jail, where she stayed for 11 hours.
A Georgia state trooper indicated that it's routine for police to detain foreign nationals for traffic violations. The procedure was put in place in anticipation of complying with the state immigration law that goes into effect in July.
GALEO says the law requires police to identify the immigration status of all foreign nationals who are arrested for a felony or DUI -- not a speeding charge. But the state trooper said it's procedure to jail someone from another country no matter how minor the offense seems, while officials confirm the person is in the country legally.
In a letter to Gov. Sonny Perdue, GALEO Executive Director Jerry Gonzalez wrote, "We are deeply disturbed about the application of [the law] and its unintended consequences, specifically regarding the case of the Canadian tourist[.] ... We would urge you to issue specific public guidelines for all local and state law enforcement officials on how they need to comply with [the law] in order to be in full compliance of all federal laws."
It'll be interesting to see if Perdue responds.
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