Arizona Police And Tribal Police And The Now-Signed Tribal Law And Order act

From The American Spectator:

Arizona Police and Tribal Police


By James M. Thunder on 7.30.10 @ 6:08AM



Surely there is some irony and hypocrisy in the fact that, on the day after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against some provisions of the Arizona law that specified the enforcement in the state of certain federal immigration laws, President Obama signed into law yesterday the Tribal Law and Order Act. Why irony? Why hypocrisy?



First let me observe, and correct me if I am wrong, that state officers, including state judges, are sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution and all (all!) federal laws. If this were not clear before the Civil War, it was made clear after the Civil War. It is their duty. They need no grant from the federal government. So, even without a state law in Arizona that commands police within the state to enforce certain federal immigration laws, and details how they must do so, they are obliged by their oaths to do so.



Comes now President Obama, the Chief Executive Officer of the United States, sworn to faithfully execute the federal laws, who instructs Attorney General Holder to march into federal court to seek an injunction against this new Arizona law and to prohibit the enforcement of federal laws (bad enough by itself) and compounds this violation of his oath by restraining police officers from performing their sworn obligations. At the President's request, the federal court has carved out -- from the universe of the laws the police are sworn to uphold -- particular federal immigration laws. This is a reversal of the Civil Rights Era in which the federal government mandated that the states comply with federal law -- and sent federal marshals and troops to ensure that they did so.



The day after the judge's ruling, President Obama signed the Trial Law and Order Act. According to reports, this law "will allow selected tribal police officers to enforce federal laws on Indian lands…" I am not sufficiently versed in Indian Law to know why tribal police officers, unlike state officers, need to be specifically deputized to enforce federal law. And, perhaps a reader can inform us whether this new law defines the federal laws now enforceable by tribal police to include immigration laws. Certainly a positive answer to this question would highlight the contrast that exists now between the authorities of tribal and Arizona police. For, whatever the answer, tribal police have been granted the authority which has been denied Arizona police.



But there is more. The report states that tribal police are empowered to enforce federal laws "whether or not the offender is Indian." If there was any merit to the argument that the Arizona law necessarily entailed racial profiling, is there not a great risk of racial profiling when tribal police enforce the federal laws against non-Indians on Indian Reservations? It is far easier for tribal police to discern who does not belong on the reservations they patrol than for Arizona police to discern who does not belong in the United States.



So, do we not have the prospect of a person of Hispanic ethnicity on a reservation in Arizona being lawfully stopped and questioned by tribal police, while the same person standing outside the reservation cannot be by Arizona police?



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