PORT TOWNSEND, Wash. — The City Council here voted 6-1 June 2 to send a resolution to President Obama, and leaders of the U.S. Senate and House asking for a halt to Border Patrol enforcement including checkpoint stops on U.S. Highway 101 with overnight deportation of undocumented people.

Before the vote, Carl Nomura, a highly respected community leader, told the council the checkpoints and raids on the North Olympic Peninsula remind him of the mass roundup and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Nomura said he himself was a victim, imprisoned in one of the Japanese Relocation Centers. “The law of the land is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty,” he said.

Councilman Mark Welch said he was reluctant to get involved with federal policy but quoted Benjamin Franklin’s warning, “They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Liz Rivera Goldstein, a veteran peace activist in the Port Townsend area, hailed the near unanimous adoption of the resolution. “I’m thrilled about it,” she told the World. “I think it is so important. So much money has been wasted in this misguided policy of harassment of citizen and non-citizen alike.”

She said co-workers on her job have arrived late at work because they were held up at the ICE-Border Patrol checkpoints. “I know what this is like. I too am of Mexican descent,” she said. “I have a great aunt who was in the U.S. legally. Yet she was arrested and deported back to Mexico. We live in America. We are supposed to have rights.”

Many towns and cities across the country have enacted council ordinances declaring themselves “sanctuary” cities and proclaiming that their law enforcement officers will not assist the Border Patrol and ICE agents in enforcement of the dragnet raids and mass arrests of undocumented people.

That defiant attitude has enraged the ultra-right immigrant-bashers. An outfit calling itself Respect Washington is scrambling to collect 241,153 signatures by the July 3 deadline of registered voters in Washington State to place I-1043 on the ballot in the election next Nov. 3. Petitions in support of I-1043 were inserted in local newspapers across the state under a lurid headline, “Stop State Funding of Illegal Aliens, Theft of Jobs, and Social Security Numbers.”



I-1043 would require state and local law enforcement to assist federal agents in the enforcement of immigration law. It would require employers, both private and public, to verify any employee’s legal status through the federal government’s “E-Verify.” It would require the Department of Motor Vehicles to also verify the legal status of anyone applying for a drivers license. And it would also require state and local officials to verify a person’s eligibility for social services and benefits including attendance at schools. medical care, food stamps, or unemployment compensation.

Goldstein denounced the ballot initiative as an attempt “to codify ignorance and hatred into law.” She charged that the rightwing is trying to whip up “a backlash against the attempt in our country to reflect a more diverse and accepting community…the fact that our country was ready to elect Barack Obama, a real step in the right direction.”

Among groups that have thrown full support to the immigrant-bashing ballot effort is Stormfront.org, web site of the Ku Klux Klan that features the “White Pride” ravings of Klansmen David Duke and Don Black. The Klan posted on their site Respect Washington’s appeal for cash donations to hire contractors to collect signatures for I-1043.

The Washington State Hispanic/Latino Legislative Organization s working hard to expose I-1043 and an earlier version I-409, charging that they “would result in the growth of prejudice and discrimination against Washington’s Hispanic/Latino and immigrant communities.” It adds, “Hate groups are using numbers and figures accusing undocumented immigrants of adding to the economic crisis in our country. This is a campaign of misinformation to scare people.”