(MintPress) – Former Arizona Governor Raul Castro was detained recently by police, who were questioning the immigration status of the former public official. Castro, a 96-year-old Mexican-American, was held in the Arizona desert heat for a half hour before police decided that the he was, in fact, a legal U.S. citizen.
The incident has prompted sharp criticism of the “show me your papers” provision of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law, which allows police to stop and question the immigration status of people they deem may be in the country illegally. Although the Supreme Court recently struck down other, harsher measures of this law, police still have the ability to stop, question and detain those suspected of being in the United States illegally.
The Castro incident
Raul Castro was the first and only Mexican-American governor of Arizona, winning office in 1974. He served as an ambassador to El Salvador and Boliva in the 1960s and later as the ambassador to Argentina during the Carter administration.
While few may recognize the aging politician on the street, Castro’s car was stopped by border officials on June 12, 2012 after officials detected high levels of radiation on his vehicle. Castro, who has a pacemaker and suffers from a heart condition, told officers that he had recently received treatment for his condition at the Tucson Heart Hospital. This, Castro said, was the cause of the high radiation levels.
However, it seems that the ensuing investigation had little to do with verifying the legitimate health condition of the former governor and more to do with verifying the legal status of Castro, who was born in Mexico in 1916. Castro moved with his family to the United States in 1926, obtaining full legal U.S. citizenship in the process.
Instead of sequestering Castro in an air-conditioned facility, the elderly Castro was left to stand in the 100 degree heat of Arizona’s Sonora desert while officials conducted their search.
“I’ve worked on immigration matters all of my life, as an ambassador, a governor and on the border. But this was really bad judgment,” Castro said in a recent interview.
Castro, who has been detained and questioned previously on two other occasions, expressed his discontent saying, “I’m 96 years old. It’s not like I’m a gangbanger who was going to run away.”
The incident has brought increased debate to the legality and practicality of Arizona’s strict immigration law SB 1070. Opponents point to cases like the one of Castro as proof that the “show me your papers” provision is discriminatory and can result in legal U.S. citizens being unnecessarily detained and questioned.
The Supreme Court and SB 1070
Late last month, the Supreme Court struck down a majority of Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070. Among those provisions struck down as unconstitutional were requirements that all immigrants obtain and carry immigration registration papers on their person at all times, making it a criminal offense for an undocumented immigrant to seek work or hold a job and the provision which allowed police to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants without warrants.
Five states, including Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah, have modeled their state immigration laws after Arizona, which could create a difficult battle to reform state laws following the definitive Supreme Court decision.
However, the key provision not struck down by the court, the “show me your papers” provision, allows officers to question anyone they suspect to be in the country illegally. Castro, and others of Hispanic-Americans have been held mistakenly by officers dubious of their legal immigration status.
National opinion polls have shown a dip in public support since the Supreme Court ruling. However, a majority of Americans still support giving police departments the ability to stop, question and verify the immigration status of a person suspected of being in the country illegally.
When the law was first proposed in 2010, a full 64 percent of Americans supported the bill in its entirety, according to polling conducted by the Pew Research Center. However, in the runup to the decision, that support had dipped to 58 percent, with 38 percent of Americans disapproving of SB 1070. While the debate continues, legal scholars point out that not striking down this provision does not mean that it will survive further litigation in state courts.
NPR’s senior Washington editor Ron Elving opines on this distinction in an interview, saying:
“The split result is that the portion of the law that has gotten most of its attention, the 2B provision, was not really ruled on and we expect there to be further litigation on it. One thing to bear in mind here is that it really hasn’t been enforced because first a district court and then a federal appeals court stayed that.”
Continuing, Elving notes that various legal challenges have been launched, saying, “So we haven’t really got an enforcement record on this and when we get one there are pending litigation cases that – coming from the ACLU and some immigration groups and so on, that are going to test this law further. And the justices indicated that they were expecting that to happen.”
Some have noted that the ambiguous language of the law could allow police to detain individuals purely for reasons of race or ethnicity rather than actual suspicious criminal activity. Castro’s case is one such example of a legal U.S. citizen unnecessarily being held simply for reasons of ethnicity and national origin.