A Senate committee approves legislation that gives Louisiana police officers the power to arrest people who are in the United States illegally. Denham Springs Senator Valarie Hodges says the federal government is doing a poor job of keeping migrants from coming over the southern border, the U-S constitution gives states the ability to protect themselves…
“Article four section four of the U-S Constitution says the United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government. It shall protect each of them against invasion. I would argue that this is an invasion.”
Susan Weishar, from the Jesuit Social Research Institute, warned this proposed law could lead to the deportation of hundreds migrant laborers, who would be separated from their children..
“I have seen the impact of deportation on kids. It is horrendous. They will never get over it.”
Huey Fischer Garcia, a staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, says this law would clog up the state’s legal system as state judges are not up to speed on immigration law
“The reason why our U-S district judges and our circuit judges don’t do immigration law that’s why we have a whole separate legal system for immigration law because of the technicalities of that system.”
Port Allen Senator Caleb Kleinpeter is the co-author legislation and didn’t want to hear the argument that this legislation will cost the state more dollars to prosecute cases…
“You can say its costing us, if we do go through this. It’s costing us now for all the crime that’s being committed by illegal immigrants in this state.”
Weishar says their are students that show the crime rates for undocumented individuals are lower than U.S. Citizens.
