Quote:Once again, this is biased media. I did try to go to each story that you linked, but two of them wanted me to "sign up" which I will not do. It's bad website design and I could easily get around it, but I digress.
Once again, I would bet that the ranchers and home owners that have property that is on the border would probably be willing to either sell to the government or authorize the use. There are many ranchers that are either on the border or close to it that have to deal with the immigration problem every day. Of course, the bureaucrats in Washington don't have to see this happening on a daily basis.
And based upon those stories and conversations I've had with farmers and ranchers living on or near the border in Arizona and California, I can tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt that for the vast majority of border residents, the answer would be, "I'll build my own damn fence if I want one. Get off my land."
You forget that I'm a political science major who went to college in Arizona then moved to San Diego. Border policy and politics has long been an interest of mine, and your notion that those living along the border--people who, for the most part, have had that land in their families for well over 100 years--would gladly hand their property over to the federal government is just plain wrong. That's not mother-in-law research. That's trips to border towns, visits to Minutemen gatherings along the California border (they, btw, would happily build their own fence on their own property, but I never met one willing to give his land up to the government for theirs), staying on top of the news, even talking to the Border Patrol on the rare occasion that I came across one interested in having a conversation more substantial than, "Are you an American citizen?". You're just wrong about this. There's no way to throw any credit to your argument because your argument is just completely incorrect.
Quote:I don't know what the resolution was either, but just think about it for a second. These people are in the country illegally. They were held at gun point until the authorities arrived. How are they justified in suing in our legal system when the are not citizens? What crime is the rancher potentially guilty of for holding illegals at gun point and giving them a verbal warning? What crime did he commit and/or what civil rights violation was there?
Let's take this one from the top.
One must have standing to sue. Standing, in the United States requires three things:
1. Injury-in-fact (harm to a person's interests, basically)
2. Causation (demonstrable evidence that the defendant caused the harm to the plaintiff's interests)
3. Redressability (a favorable decision must be able to correct the injury)
Please note that immigration status is not a factor when determining standing. Any human being can sue in any court in the United States.
The claims of the illegal immigrants centered around being held at gunpoint, threatened with a dog and told that if they tried to leave, they'd be shot. Holding someone at gunpoint for trespassing is not a crime. Telling them that anyone attempting to leave would be shot is borderline kidnapping, which is definitely a violation of their rights. Being threatened with a dog, eh, maybe? It depends on the context of the threat. For now, let's focus on the gun.
If the rancher did, in fact, say that anyone attempting to flee would be shot, he's effectively holding them hostage, possibly even kidnapping them. Giving someone a "verbal warning" is very different from telling them, as they're effectively trapped in a deadly situation, that any attempt to leave the deadly situation will result in their being killed.
llegal immigrants have the same right to an lawyer that anyone else would, as per the Fifth Amendment. All it would take is one illegal immigrant saying the four magic words--"I want an attorney"--and one legally has to be provided for them. Once an attorney hears that sixteen people were held hostage until the Border Patrol arrived, and the Border Patrol then illegally took possession of people who should have been allowed to flee back to Mexico (or whatever--let's approach this from the lawyer's angle), then there are some significant problems there, and most capable, well-meaning immigration lawyers would immediately begin filing papers to block the deportation of the 16 immigrants and, at the same time, file lawsuits against all involved.
And that brings us to the article. That's how the illegal immigrants have standing to sue, and the crime and rights violations that the rancher--if he actually
did tell people that he would kill them if they tried to leave--might have committed, as well as how other parties wound up mixed in with the lawsuit.
The easiest way to stop situations like this from happening, of course, is to just load illegal immigrants onto a bus and drop them off at the border, then "politely instruct" them to walk back across into Mexico without questioning them. Right now, it can take days (or longer) to get illegal immigrants from a detention facility to the border.
The downside of such an approach is that questioning them is essential to identifying coyotes and drug runners, as well as to identifying the persons that drug runners were going to meet up with on this side of the line. Based upon lawsuit figures vs. deportations, it would seem to me that this is a pretty rare occurrence and not something worth screaming about.
