Earlier today, the American Civil Liberties Union (national and Arizona branch), MALDEF, the National Immigration Law Center, Dolores Huerta, Richard Chavez (brother of Cesar Chavez), and Linda Ronstadt (?) held a news conference in Phoenix to protest the new Arizona immigration law and to announce that they'll be mounting a legal challenge (full press release here).

At the event, Alessandra Soler Meetze, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona lied about the law:

"This law will only make the rampant racial profiling of Latinos that is already going on in Arizona much worse... If this law were implemented, citizens would effectively have to carry 'their papers' at all times to avoid arrest. It is a low point in modern America when a state law requires police to demand documents from people on the street."

One would think that if there were such profiling that the Department of Justice would have been able to catch it. Yet, after their fishing expedition, they choose to go after Joe Arpaio for something unrelated to profiling. And, one wouldn't expect the assistant secretary for ICE to have defended Arpaio against claims that he profiles.

Further, citizens wouldn't have to carry their "papers" (a not-so-subtle breaking of Godwin's Law) all the time; native-born citizens won't raise "reasonable suspicion", and those who've gone through a long naturalization process will be able to describe that process and, even without "papers", prove that they're citizens. And, almost all of those will have some reasonable form of ID on them, such as a driver's license. And, in order to be asked they've have to have "lawful contact" and then raise "reasonable suspicion" and even after that the cop still has leeway: they don't have to ask if it's "[im]practicable" or would impede an investigation.

The last line is just as deceptive as the rest: the state law does not "require[] police to demand documents from people on the street." As stated above, you first need "lawful contact" and then "reasonable suspicion", and after all that the cop has leeway.

If Alessandra Soler Meetze has to lie about that, can you trust the lawsuit she wants to bring or her other statements?

Note also the short video from the event (peekURL.com/vz3vdr2) where Huerta says, referring to MALDEF and others fighting Proposition 187, "after they filed that lawsuit [against 187], a million Latinos became citizens". The audience cheers, and those in the audience raise their fists. Needless to say, that's just the latest in a barely-concealed desire by many Hispanic leaders not to do what's best for the U.S. but simply to amass race-based power.