by Mark Sills, FaithAction Executive Director

If you decided to stop your car in the parking lot along West Market Street at Lindley Park around 10 p.m., and a police officer came up to you, asked for identification, what do you think would happen next?

For one young Greensboro man recently, this simple situation led to him being arrested, held in jail for several days, and eventually given over to US federal agents for deportation. His crime was second degree trespassing. In other words, he was in the parking lot of a city park after dusk. He was not driving, and he was not drinking or taking drugs. In fact, he and his friend has just gotten off work after a double shift from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. at an area restaurant. Wanting to take a walk after such a long shift, they stopped by Lindley park, which was on their way home from the restaurant. Almost immediately, a Greensboro City Police Officer came up to the car and asked for identification. The driver produced his North Carolina Driver's License, and was issued a ticket charging him with this misdemeanor charge. But the young passenger in the car only had his Mexican Voter Card on him, and the police officer refused to accept that as identification. So, the young man was arrested, taken to jail, and there he sat for several days. Do you think that would have happened to you? Even if you had no valid identification on you?

City Police Chief Tim Bellamy recently told me in a public meeting at Iglesia Cristiana Internacional that in just such a situation as this, I would not need to fear being arrested. He said that I would be issued a citation and would have to come before a magistrate to settle the issue. But, he emphasized, I would NOT be arrested.

Not so for this young, hard working man, who as a passenger in someone else's car, and carrying an up-to-date photo identification issued by a national government, who most certainly was arrested and held without bond on no other charge than just being in the parking lot of a public park after hours.

Actions like this totally destroy trust between law enforcement and the refugee and immigrant communities. Such actions by law enforcement not only fail to strengthen the rule of law, they actually undermine public safety and weaken the ability of the police to deal with actual criminal activities. They create fear throughout the community. This fear traumatizes children who don't know when their father leaves for work if he will come home at the end of the day. This fear causes immigrants to be more afraid of the police than they are of the criminals who prey on them in increasingly violent ways. This makes them easy targets. It encourages crime. It means that if you or I became a victim of a crime and the only witness was an immigrant, we would no doubt be unable to get the witness to testify.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, dozens of sheriff's deputies man checkpoints, sometimes wearing masks to hide their identity, while literally thousands of criminal warrants go unserved. Somehow, in that place, an immigrant working is somehow considered more dangerous than a rapist or murderer on the loose. And citizens are often forced to stop at multiple checkpoints on their way to work, to church, or to shop. Is this what Guilford County is to become? In just the last few weeks, under the guise of assuring that everyone is driving with a seatbelt fashioned, or making sure that drivers are not drinking, three checkpoints involving both sheriff's deputies as well as city and campus police have been set up. Each as been located in a neighborhood with a high percentage of immigrant residents. Is this racial profiling? Have you had a checkpoint in YOUR neighborhood lately?