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Not so, according to Brookline Police, but some think otherwise. Brookline police arrested 29 people in 2016 for driving without a valid license, at least a handful of those were not born in the US.

Last year Brookline Police issued 16,298 moving violations to motorists driving through town. Included in those violations were 29 arrests of people driving without a license.

A TAB review of the 29 arrests showed 20 of the people had faced more significant charges previously, such as driving under the influence or were wanted on warrants. The other nine were arrested because they never had a license and were driving when an officer pulled them over for a traffic offense. Of those nine, eight were Hispanic and one was black.

The review comes after a meeting discussing the town's consideration of Sanctuary City status. The question: How would police interact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and should they be arresting people without a driver's license?

Brookline resident and Town Meeting Member Mariela Ames, a courtroom interpreter, brought the argument to the selectmen that arresting people for not having a license could unfairly put immigrants who are in the country illegally in ICE's crosshairs when the police run their fingerprints. Her husband, Brooks Ames, a lawyer, echoed the sentiments on social media.

Ames is suing a number of elected and paid town officials on behalf of a former firefighter, and for a time short time on behalf of two police officers, charging those in the suit with racism.

Brookline Police do not ask for immigration status when issuing citations or arrests, but when they arrest an individual, those fingerprints are sent to the FBI and then on to ICE. But none of the 29 individuals in 2016 arrested for not having an active driver's license while driving came back as wanted by immigration officials, although a number told police they were not born in the US.

By comparison, in 2016 the Cambridge Police arrested 1,882. Of those, 891 were not arrested on the spot, but summonsed to court. And 161 people were arrested for driving without ever having a license (chapter 90 section 10). But 138 of those were summonsed to court.

There were 147 arrests in 2016 in Wellesley. Seven of those were chapter 90 section 10, according to Wellesley Police. There were 6,395 traffic violations that same year. There were 4,994 written warnings, 1,145 civil citations, and 256 criminal complaints.

Newton Police said they arrested 19 individuals last year for driving without a license.

The police argument

Police Chief Daniel OLeary said the arrests are not personal.

Part of our job is to make sure people are safe on the roads. And stopping people who make traffic violations is a big part of that, he said. "In order for a community to have a safety on the road, the police have to have a enforcement policy thats balanced and fair. And to have people throw out at a public meeting that were not being fair when records indicate otherwise is not right. These are records they stand on their own," he said.

The state law says you cant operate a vehicle without a valid driver's license. OLeary said once an officer discovers someone does not have a valid license, its incumbent upon police to enforce the law.

Still, a 2016 policy issued to the police department reminds officers to take into consideration whether there are other people in the car who could drive the car or a prior history before calling a tow truck to pick up the car or arresting an individual who doesnt have a license.

The policy came out of conversations within the department after some officers expressed concern about whether it was necessary to tow the car away in every instance of such a violation. Officers felt it could be an undue hardship on people who might not be able to afford the cost, he said.

The arrest reports of the nine people cited for driving without a license each indicate a police officer pulled them over for traffic violations, including texting while driving, illegal left turns, failing to stop at a traffic light, failing to stop at a stop sign, speeding 15 miles over. Most individuals appeared to admit right away they had never had a license. And all had previous interactions with the police, be it previous arrests or other traffic-related infractions.

If the Brookline Police let one of these people off the hook and they drove off and got into an accident, that is a dereliction of the polices duty to keep people safe, said the chief.

Of the nine individuals arrested only for driving without ever having had a license, eight of them were Hispanic and at least three told police they were not born in the US.

But its not like the police have it out for immigrants, said the chief.

For example

Consider the practice of giving tickets out for leaf blower violations. Last year, the police worked with owners of landscaping companies and various committees in town on the problem of what to do about noise violations there.

Police voiced concerns about handing out tickets to people working for landscaping companies, many of whom might be immigrants.

Why would we issue a ticket to a guy who is probably not even making that much money? said the chief of the $100 fine.

The town and the committee tasked with looking into the towns noise bylaws around this looked into the possibility of ticketing the owner of the property.

Brookline Police has begun tracking interactions with ICE agents, noting when they receive requests from the federal agency. This is a new practice. The police chief said Brookline Police have gotten alerts from ICE six times in recent years requesting they hold individuals for them. But ICE did not show up to take any of those individuals into their custody. The chief announced his department will not honor ICE requests going forward, ahead of any official word from the Board of Selectmen.

Anthony Naro, a lawyer and member of the Diversity, Inclusion and Community Relations Commission tasked with coming up with a recommendation for the Board of Selectmen on how to amend its police police in regard to ICE and sanctuary city status, argues that it is unconstitutional for local authorities to make civil arrests on behalf of the federal government.

"Brookline deserves progressive policies which protect the constitutional rights of everyone in our community; at the same time, we need transparent policies that can be fairly, and unambiguously, executed by officers in the field, and understood by all members of the community," he said in a recent opinion piece in the TAB.

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Do traffic violations target illegal immigrants? - Wicked Local Brookline

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The statement is included in testimony slated for delivery on Wednesday, April 5, by Gen. John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Typically, routine testimonyis provided early to the legislators so they can prepare questions for the witness, but it is rarely leaked.

According to the Associated Press:

Secretary John Kelly said the steep decline in arrests is no accident and credited President Donald Trumps approach to illegal immigration

In his testimony for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Kelly said fewer than 12,500 people were caught crossing the border illegally last [in March]. That compares with more than 43,000 in December.

Kelly told lawmakers that the number of [Central American] families and children traveling alone groups that accounted for hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers in recent years also declined steeply. Last month fewer than 1,000 children were caught at the border and fewer than 1,100 people traveling as families were found. In recent years most of the families and children traveling alone have been from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Another report on Tuesday said the data showed a 67 percent drop in migrants seeking to cross the border.

David V. Aguilar, former U.S. Border Patrol and acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that March 2017 figures he reviewed indicate illegal border crossings are down 67 percent [compared to March 2016] . Its actually up to 67 percent drop compared to last year, Aguilar told the Senate committee.

During his eight-yeartenure, former President Barack Obama reduced border barriers and allowed at least 300,000 migrants from Central America to cross the border and get temporary residency, plus work permits and access to Americans schools. That wave of migrants helped solidify public opposition toimmigration, aided Donald Trumps presidential campaign and helped cause many extra crimes in the United States.

However, the flow of new illegal immigrants is only a small part of the nations immigrant-labor oversupply.

Currently, at least 11 million illegal immigrantsare living in the United States, of which at least 8 million hold jobs. Many of the recent illegal immigrants arrive legally as tourists or workers but fail to leave when their visas expire. In 2015, for example, almost 500,000 people overstayed their visas and remained for some time as illegal immigrants.

Also, the federal government annually invites 1 million people to legally immigrate to the United States, and provideswork permits to a shifting population of up to 1.45 million salary-cutting white-collar guest-workers,plus at least 200,000 blue-collar contract-workers. The immigrants and contract workers compete for jobs sought by the 4 million young Americans who join the workforceeach year.

Overall, the huge inflow of migrants, both legal and illegal, help lower Americans salaries and wages by roughly $500 billion per year. In turn, that money is scooped up by employers and Wall Street investors as higher profits.

President Trump has promised to toughen border security by building a barrier along most of the border, and he has already directed border officers to end Obamas catchand release policy. He has also rejuvenated repatriation policies and has promised to curb business use of temporarycontract workers in place of Americans.

Continued here:
AP: Illegal Immigration in March Was Lowest in 17 Years, Says ...

This article first appeared on the Hoover Institution site.

The arguments for ignoring illegal immigration are as well-known as the self-interested motives that drive it.

In the abstract, open-borders advocates argue that in a globalized culture, borders are becoming reactionary and artificial constructs. They should not interrupt more natural ebbs and flows of migrant populations.

More concretely, an array of vested interests sees advantage in dismantling the border: employers in hospitality, construction, food processing and agriculture prefer hard-working low-wage immigrants, whose social needs are often subsidized by the government and who are reluctant to organize for higher wages.

The Democratic Party welcomes in impoverished immigrants from Latin America and Mexico. It hopes to provide generous social welfare assistance and thereby shepherd new arrivals and their offspring into the salad bowl of victimization and identity politicsand thereby change the electoral map of key states from red to blue.

La Raza activists see unchecked illegal immigration as useful in maintaining a large pool of unassimilated and poor foreign nationals who look to group leaders, thereby ensuring the continuance of what has become an industry of ethnic activism and careerism.

Mexicowhich is now offering advice to illegal immigrants on how best to avoid U.S. federal immigration authoritieshas the most to gain by porous borders. It envisions the United States as a relief valve destination to export its own poor and desperate rather than to have them agitate and demand costly social services from Mexico City.

Related:Victor Davis Hanson: Why should we believe the anti-Trump press?

Mexico enjoys some $25 billion in annual remittances, predicated on the unspoken assumption that its poor and hard-working expatriates can only afford to send such vast sums out of the United States through the magnanimity of the American social welfare system that helps subsidize families to free up hard-earned cash. Mexico has learned that its own expatriates are loyal proponents who romanticize Mexicothe farther away and longer they are absent from it.

U.S. border patrol agents stand at an open gate on the fence along the Mexico border at the Border Field State Park, California, on November 19, 2016. Victor Davis Hanson writes that in California, thousands of illegal aliens operate cars without mandatory insurance, drivers licenses and registrations. Mike Blake/reuters

Yet lost in this conundrum are the pernicious effects of illegal immigration on the idea of citizenship in a consensual society. In the Western constitutional tradition, citizenship was based upon shared assumptions that were often codified in foundational constitutional documents.

The first pillar of citizenship is the idea that the nation-state has the sole right to create and control its own borders. The duty of all Western constitutions, dating back to those of the Greek city-states, was to protect their own citizens within clearly defined and defensible borders. Without a finite space, no consensual society can make rules and laws for its own, enhance and preserve commonalities of language and culture, or raise a military to protect its own self-interest.

Borders are not normally artificial or post-colonial constructs, but natural boundaries that usually arise to reflect common bonds of language, culture, habit and tradition. These ties are sometimes fragile and limited, and cannot operate on universal terms; indeed, they become attenuated when borders disappear and residents not only have little in common, but lack the mechanisms or even the desire to assimilate and integrate their migrant populations.

When borders are fluid and unenforced, it inevitably follows that assimilation and integration also become lax, as society loses a sense of who, or even where, their residents are. And the idea that the Bill of Rights should apply to those beyond U.S. borders may be a noble sentiment, but the practical effect of such utopianism is to open a Pandoras box of impossible enforcement, affronts to foreign governments, endless litigation and a diversion of resources away from protecting the rights of citizens at home.

Residency is also confused with citizenship, but they are no more the same than are guests at a dinner party and the partys hosts, who own the home.

A country reverts to tribalism unless immigrants enter it legallyoften based on the hosts determination of how easily and rapidly they can become citizens, and the degree to which they can benefit their adopted countryand embrace its customs, language and habits.

Related:Victor Davis Hanson: Are we witnessing the end of identity politics?

The Balkans, Rwanda and Iraq remind us that states without common citizen ties, affinities, rights and responsibilities become fragmented and violent, as their diverse populations share no investment in the welfare of the commonwealth. What plagues contemporary Iraq and Syria is the lack of clearly defined borders, and often shifting and migrating populations that have no stake in the country of their residence, resulting in competing tribes that vie for political control to aid their own and punish the Other.

A second pillar of citizenship is the sanctity of the law.

What also separates Western and Westernized nations from often impoverished and unsecure states is a notion that citizens entrust their elected representatives with the crafting of laws and then show their fealty by obeying the resulting legislation.

The sanctity of the entire legal system in a republic rests on two important corollaries: citizens cannot pick and choose which laws they obeyeither on the grounds that some are deemed bothersome and not in their own self-interest, or on the pretext that they are minor and their violation does not impair society at large.

Citizenship instead demands that unpopular or unworkable laws be amended or repealed by the proper legislative and judicial branches of government, not by popular neglect or violation.

Once immigration law goes unenforced, there are pernicious ramifications. First, citizens question why all laws are not equally subject to nullification. If the immigrant is excused from obeying immigration law, is the citizen likewise exempt from IRS statutes or simple traffic laws?

Second, the immigrant himself adopts a mindset that obeying the law is unimportant. Currently among illegal aliens, there is an epidemic of identity theft, forged government affidavits, and the use of fake social security numbers.

Open-borders advocates do not disagree that these violations undermine a society, but instead argue that such desperate measures are needed for impoverished illegal aliens to survive in the shadows. Perhaps, but equally true is that once an illegal resident discovers that some of the laws of the host are not enforced, he then assumes others will not be either.

In truth, illegal aliens lose respect for their hosts, concluding that if Americans do not care to enforce their own laws, foreign nationals need not abide by them either. In reductionist terms, when an immigrants first act when entering the United States involves breaking the law, then all subsequent violations become only that much easier.

Besides secure borders and respect for the laws, a third tenet of citizenship is the idea of equal applicability of the law. Citizens in modern Western societies are assured that their laws are applied in the same manner to all citizens regardless of differences in class, gender, race, or religion.

Illegal immigration insidiously erodes such equality under the law. When millions of foreign nationals reside illegally in the United States, a myriad of laws must be enforced unequally to perpetuate the initial transgression. Illegal immigration does not just imply illegal entry, but also continued illegal residence and all that entails on a daily basis.

Sanctuary cities protect illegal aliens from federal immigration agencies in a way that is not true of American citizens who arrive at airports and must go through customs, with no exemption from federal agents examining their passports and personal histories. If crimes or infractions are found, there is no safe space at an airport exempt from federal enforcement.

In California, thousands of illegal aliens have operated automobiles without mandatory insurance, drivers licenses and registrations and, in some municipalities, are not arrested for such violationseven as American citizens who cannot claim such apparent mitigating circumstances are.

In my own vicinity in rural California, there are hundreds of dwellings where multiple families in trailers, sheds, and garages reside, employing illegal water, power and sewage hookups. Most are more or less left alone by county authorities. The apparent rationale is that such violations are too chronic and widespread to be addressed, or that it simply does not pay for cash-strapped agencies to enforce the law in the case of those who are unable or unwilling to pay substantial fines.

Either way, the nearby citizen who is hounded by county or federal authorities on matters concerning the proper height of his mailbox, or the exact distance between a new leach line and his existing well, feels that the laws are unequally applied and loses confidence in the value of his own citizenship. He often sees it either as no real advantage over mere residency, or perhaps even a disadvantage.

In sum, there are several reasons to put a stop to illegal immigration. But among the most important and forgotten is the insidious destruction of what it means to be a citizen.

Victor Davis Hanson is a Martin and Illie Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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The Hidden Costs the Rest of Us Pay for Illegal Immigration - Newsweek

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Activist Wants Illegal Immigrants Banned From Public Schools CBS Los Angeles YUCAIPA (CBSLA.com) Joseph Turner says it's time to fight back against illegal immigration, and he wants to start with the public school system. He says since public schools are funded by taxpayers, only the children of U.S. citizens should be ... California Activist Calls For Ban Of Illegal Immigrants From Public SchoolsDaily Caller This group wants to bar children in the U.S. illegally from attending ...Los Angeles Times Activist proposes undocumented immigrant ban at Yucaipa ...San Bernardino County Sun International Business Times all 11 news articles »

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Activist Wants Illegal Immigrants Banned From Public Schools - CBS Los Angeles

Homeland Security cannot promise that illegal immigrants will not be arrested if they come forward to report they have been a victim of a crime or a witness to one, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Some victims and witnesses themselves are potentially criminal immigrants who may pose a threat to the country, David Lapan, a spokesman from DHS said at a news briefing.

Lapan added that immigration arrest in courthouses are necessary because some jurisdictions will not cooperate with requests to alert federal agencies.

Los Angeles officials, for example, are already attributing a drop in reported crimes to President Trump's illegal immigration crackdown. These officials fear the threat of arrests can deter victims from reporting crimes or witnesses from cooperating in investigations.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said last month that his city has seen a 25 percent decrease in the number of sexual assaults reported by Latinos living in the city and a drop of about 10 percent in the number of reported domestic violence cases since Trump took office.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions also defended the practice of arresting these immigrants at courthouses in a letter last month to the chief justice of the California Supreme Court.

"Because courthouse visitors are typically screened upon entry to search for weapons and other contraband, the safety risks for arresting officers and persons being arrested are substantially decreased," Kelly and Sessions wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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DHS won't rule out arresting illegal immigrant crime victims, witnesses - Fox News