Bait and switch

The optics and symbolic power of North Carolina’s immigration debate

It was the second to the last day of the legislative session, and Rep. George Cleveland, a conservative Republican lawmaker from Jacksonville, was eager to get a final vote on a bill restricting IDs carried by undocumented immigrants and banning so-called “sanctuary cities.”

Titled the Protect North Carolina Workers Act, HB 318 also tightened up the state’s E-verify program and cut off food stamps to able-bodied adults without children. Some of the chamber’s more mainstream Republicans, including Speaker Speaker Pro Tem Skip Stam and Rep. Harry Warren of Salisbury, made it clear they would only support the bill if it carved out a key exception for law enforcement.

The provision related to ID cards seemed squarely focused on making life more difficult for undocumented people who live in North Carolina. The measure prohibited the courts, law enforcement officers and government officials the use of the matricula consular and other documents issued by foreign consulates and embassies. Going even further, the proposed law took aim at ID cards issued by “any person, organization, county, city, or other local authority.” The language seemed tailor-made for the ID program launched in 2012 by the Greensboro nonprofit FaithAction International House.

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As the House prepared for its final vote on HB 318 on Sept. 28, local police officials from Greensboro and Burlington joined clergy for a press conference in front of FaithAction International House in Greensboro to express support for the community program under threat of elimination by the proposed law.

“Over the last several years we’ve been working hard to build relationships with that community, and we feel like the FaithAction ID has helped,” Burlington police Capt. Jeff Wood said at the press conference. “If they limit the kind of IDs we can accept, we’re going to have a whole lot more people arrested and thrown in jail tying up our law enforcement resources.”

Since 2006 — when the General Assembly changed the law to prevent people without legal status from obtaining driver’s licenses — carrying some type of ID recognized by local authorities has become a crucial factor for undocumented people seeking to keep their families together and survive day to day.

“If you interact with the authorities and you end up in jail, there is a risk you end up in deportation, just because you were stopped because your license plate is expired,” said Hernando Ramirez-Santos, the executive editor at Qué Pasa newspaper, who has closely followed the progress of HB 318. “It’s happened with the majority of undocumented people. They have to drive with an expired license plate and expired registration.”

By the time the bill came up for a final vote in the House on the evening of Sept. 29, the sponsors had already reached an agreement with the NC Association of Police Chiefs and the NC Sheriffs’ Association to carve out an exemption so that law enforcement officers could continue to accept the FaithAction IDs. The fix would be handled as an amendment to a separate “technical corrections” bill — a mechanism used sometimes by members of both parties to tweak legislation when the close of the session leaves little time to send bills back to the other chamber for concurrence. The amendment wasn’t even out of drafting when Rep. George Cleveland, a Republican from Jacksonville, asked his colleagues to give final approval to the legislation.

Stam and Warren made it clear they were only voting for the original bill because they had been assured that the concerns of the police chiefs and sheriffs would be addressed.

One Democratic lawmaker asked Cleveland to explain the objective of the original bill.

“The objective of this bill is to address the illegalities of that we have floating around our state in relationship to illegal aliens,” Cleveland said coolly, “and also to address the identification cards that are being produced to give these people of semblance of propriety, a semblance of belonging here.”

Ramirez-Santos was taken aback by Cleveland’s transparency.

“They want them to feel unwelcome, like they can’t be integrated in the community,” Ramirez-Santos reflected. “They were telling the undocumented to get out of this state. I was amazed when he said that.”

In alarmist language reminiscent of Trump’s appeals to xenophobia and nativism, Cleveland charged on the House floor that undocumented immigrants in North Carolina jails have “committed murder, they’ve committed rape, they’ve committed child abuse, and they’re here because we allow it.”

He argued that taxpayers are footing the bill for services that undocumented immigrants use.

“You can be as kind and considerate as you want,” Cleveland admonished his fellow lawmakers, “but eventually they’ll overrun you and you won’t have the life that you have now. We don’t need the mentality from the other parts of the world in our state, at least in our state, so they will not assimilate.”

Several Democratic lawmakers raised objections.

Rep. Pricey Harrison of Greensboro told her colleagues that the FaithAction ID program was a model for other cities around the country.

Rep. Ed Hanes of Winston-Salem quoted from Henry David Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience, while Rep. Graig Meyer of Hillsborough recited the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Rep. Rodney Moore of Charlotte said he was disturbed by the rhetoric from the House floor.

“I heard about the rampant criminal element,” Moore said. “I won’t call them illegal because this is a nation of immigrants. All of us here in this chamber are descendants of immigrants, whether we came here by Ellis Island or we were forced into ships to come over here, whether we were forced immigrants or we were volunteer immigrants, all of us were immigrants, so let’s just take this out of the equation now.

“You’re not talking about an android, representatives,” Moore continued. “You’re talking about human beings, people who for whatever reason, whether it’s for opportunity, whether it’s to flee religious or political persecution, have come to this country, the country who is the example shining on the hill, as we say.”

Rep. John Blust, a Republican from Greensboro, detected a note of hypocrisy in his Democratic colleagues’ desire to de-link local law enforcement from federal immigration control.

“When we discussed the bill on the magistrate opt-out and now we see this clerk in Kentucky and the controversy up there, I have heard those of your persuasion just so angered that public officials will not follow the law,” Blust said. “And I’m just wondering why does that bother you for some laws that won’t be enforced by public officials, but other public officials that don’t enforce other laws are given a pass?”

Meyer responded: “Because, Rep. Blust, some of us believe in being consistent, and in being welcoming and loving towards those who have been hurt and oppressed.”

Blust alluded to the effective function of the bill — framing a national issue that Republican candidates expect to play well with their base electorate in 2016 — in remarks just before the bill received final approval on a strict party-line vote of 70 to 43.

“Hopefully, we’re seeing in the presidential race, this is becoming an issue,” he said.

But Blust’s Republican colleague, Rep. Harry Warren, spelled out the actual implications of the legislation.

“The net effect of this bill, in my opinion, will force folks who are here illegally — it will force them to seek out and purchase counterfeit documents,” said Warren, who unsuccessfully filed legislation earlier in the year to create a restricted, one-year driving permit for undocumented immigrants who pass a criminal background check. “I think we’ll see an increase in that. I think we’ll probably see a corresponding increase in identity theft.”

Ramirez-Santos predicted a similar outcome in a recent interview.

“If the government agencies cannot accept [the IDs], it’s a great obstacle,” he said. “If you rent a place, you need to pay the water. How are you going to do it? They’ve been living in that situation for many years, but it’s getting harder. They will have to use another person to open a water account or turn on the electricity.”

Speaking on the House floor, Warren went on to list several other concerns.

“Without having some form of established and verified identification, this makes it harder not only for law enforcement if you don’t have it,” he said, “it also makes it difficult for the [Department of Public Instruction] and those in the educational field, those in the medical field because by federal mandate we’re required to provide education, immunization and emergency medical care for folks who are here illegally. It’s absolutely critical we have some form of ID and because this bill denying a matricula consular card or a municipal ID — which I fully support doing away with them — but to do away with them without having some form of ID is not going to drive people who are here illegally out of the state; it’s going to exacerbate the problem.”

Warren went on to say he was supporting the bill only because of the technical amendment.

Rep. John Faircloth, a Republican and former police chief in High Point, urged his colleagues to adopt the amendment.

Far from a limited tweak, the amendment wrought a substantial change, stating that documents “created by any person, organization, county, city, or other local authority… may be used by a law enforcement officer to assist in determining the identity or residency of a person when they are the only documents providing an indication of identity or residency available to the law enforcement officer at the time.”

In other words, police could continue to accept the FaithAction IDs as a last resort — which has always been their essential function anyway.

While most coverage by leading news outlets like WRAL News and the News & Observer made at least glancing reference to the law enforcement exception tacked onto the bill, the fact was largely lost in the mix of polarized rhetoric from both supporters and opponents. An Oct. 7 column by Susan Ladd in the Greensboro News & Record belatedly reported that the FaithAction ID remained valid, while a subsequent story in the paper later that month quoted a Greensboro police captain as suggesting otherwise.

It seems not to have suited the political purposes of opponents to acknowledge that the worst harm of the bill was mitigated, while conservatives may have been reluctant to admit they achieved anything less than a full victory.

An Oct. 28 article posted on the website of Rep. Rena Turner, a Republican lawmaker from Statesville, claimed erroneously that the bill “specifically prohibits the use of consulate or embassy documents (or other documents not issued by the state or federal government) for determining the identification or residency for law enforcement purposes.” Likewise, a group called North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement that is dedicated to “stopping the flood of illegal aliens into North Carolina” reported that under the new law “ID cards created by cities, counties or religious organizations are no longer accepted forms of ID by NC law enforcement or local/state agencies.”

Coverage in the state’s Spanish-language media, whose audience critically depends on accurate reporting about immigration issues, conveyed a much clearer picture. Fluency in Spanish isn’t necessary to get the implications of front-page news photography showing smiling police officials in Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Asheboro either holding up FaithAction ID cards or answering questions during orientation sessions in rooms packed with hundreds of immigrants.

“In every article that we publish, we say, ‘You’re going to get a ticket because you’re breaking the law, because you’re driving without a license,’” Qué Pasa Executive Editor Ramirez-Santos said. “This [FaithAction ID] prevents the police from taking you to jail. But there’s still a possibility that you can go to jail if you lie to the officer. We try to explain in every article so that people can be as safe as possible.”

As the legislation awaited Gov. Pat McCrory’s signature, the partisan dimensions of North Carolina’s rural-urban divide came into further relief when Greensboro City Council passed a resolution opposing the bill by an 8-1 vote, with the council’s sole Republican dissenting.

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The governor’s decision to sign the bill in Greensboro on Oct. 28 was read by many as a slap-down of the city’s liberal municipal government. The bill signing took place in the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office, with Sheriff BJ Barnes, a longtime political ally and a popular Republican local elected official, seated at his right. Cleveland and Rep. Debra Conrad of Winston-Salem, another bill sponsor, were also on hand for the photo op, along with Rep. Jon Hardister of Greensboro.

Before putting pen to paper, McCrory railed against sanctuary cities, calling them a “breakdown” of order and “contrary to the oath every law enforcement officer and elected official” took “to uphold the Constitution.”

The governor’s language mixed alarm over crime with appeals to nativist resentment against undocumented immigrants on economic grounds.

“We have cartels; many of these are international cartels,” McCrory said. “We have gang violence that continues to go up, sometimes because of international gangs. We have schools that are becoming overcrowded. We have drug trafficking. We have hospital emergency-rooms that are flowing over with patients. And most and worst of all, we now have the scourge of human trafficking of primarily young women, who are being taken advantage of. And it’s an issue that this society and our state is not talking enough about.”

The governor’s rhetoric flew in the face of testimonials by the local police officers at the press conference at FaithAction a month earlier.

“Half of the homicides were domestic violence,” Greensboro police Capt. Mike Richey, head of the criminal investigation division, said at the time. “We have had people tell us: ‘We wouldn’t have come forward if we didn’t have the FaithAction ID.’ We’ve made arrests in a human trafficking case and a child exploitation case — which most everyone would agree is the most heinous type of crime — and those came to fruition because people cooperated with us.”

Whether he was aware of the amendment in the technical correction bill or not, McCrory made no mention of the provision in his remarks at the bill signing. The governor’s office did not respond to questions for this story before press time.

Some of the governor’s comments could have been construed as referencing either the ID restrictions or the E-verify provisions in the bill.

“There’s something else that we’re dealing with today, and that’s the verification of assuring that the people that are here, we know their true identity, just like other countries do when we visit their countries throughout the world,” McCrory said.

Barnes made a similar point in remarks during the bill signing.

“When I go to other countries I go legally and adhere to the laws,” he said. “Can we not, as the greatest nation in the world, expect others to do the same?”

If Barnes’ comparison between undocumented residents living and working in North Carolina with international tourists seemed confusing, he clarified in a later interview that what he said was exactly what he meant.

“They’re not here legally,” he said. “They’re not adhering to the rules. They’re not doing the things that a civilized, law-abiding person would do. Whenever I go to another country, the only way I go is legally. I don’t drive cars in other countries because I don’t have a driver’s license. I don’t attempt to vote over there. I don’t try to avail myself of their services other than what a normal tourist would receive.”

The fact that a passport reflects an undocumented person’s country of origin rather than their place of residence only underscores Barnes’ conviction that they shouldn’t be here in the first place.

“If that person doesn’t have any identification at all, that would be the same thing you’re talking about with the taillight situation: If that person is driving, aren’t they responsible for that car?” the sheriff asked. “That probably means they’re driving without a license and they’re driving without insurance. So they’ve broken three laws. Don’t you think they need to be here legally? You’re excusing bad behavior. Why are they driving without a driver’s license?”

Barnes said he was well aware of the exception carved out for law enforcement in the ID provision, but indicated he holds little confidence in the validity of the FaithAction ID.

“If they tell us and show us that identification, and that’s the only kind of identification we have, we’ll use it,” Barnes said. “Once we get them to jail we’ll try to identify who they truly are.”

Other local law enforcement agencies have indicated they are accepting the IDs.

Public Information Officer Susan Danielsen confirmed in early January that the Greensboro Police Department is accepting the IDs, while Winston-Salem police Lt. Tyrone Phelps said his department supports the IDs, while noting that officers may use their discretion to make an arrest for a minor traffic violation if they do not feel confident that they know the identity of the individual.

Despite his contention that undocumented immigrants are breaking the law by their very presence, Barnes said his agency will not deny them the service of public-safety protection.

“They get all the protection that they should require or need,” he said. “All they have to do is call. If someone calls me up or one of my officers and say, ‘We have been beaten up,’ we don’t go out there and ask them, ‘Are you here legally?’ That’s not what we’re going to do. We’re going to find the person who who beat them up and stole their property, and we’re going to arrest that person.”

Earlier in the month, the US Senate Democrats had blocked an effort to pass federal legislation banning so-called sanctuary cities. With McCrory’s signature, North Carolina became the first state in the union to do so, as Trump and other Republican presidential candidates stepped up their rhetoric against the concept. Just two days earlier, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had issued a letter to Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez bluntly stating, “Sanctuary city policies like those promoted by your recent decision to implement your own case-by-case immigrant detention plan will no longer be tolerated in Texas.” Soon afterwards, Abbott vowed to pursue legislation outlawing sanctuary cities when the state legislature reconvenes in 2017. And the Wisconsin legislature is currently considering a similar measure.

Speaking at the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office, McCrory made it clear that he was well aware of the national implications of the new North Carolina law.

“We’re gonna find a way in North Carolina to find out a national solution for this very complex issue because we need to find one,” McCrory said. “We want to be the model of how to do things right in North Carolina and in our country.”

The term sanctuary cities has no legal meaning, but generally refers to local ordinances geared towards encouraging undocumented people to cooperate with law enforcement by providing assurance that they won’t be targeted for deportation if they report a crime or commit a minor traffic offense. Policies in cities across the country range from simply de-emphasizing immigration as a concern of local law enforcement, to outright refusal to cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

State Sen. Jerry Tillman of Randolph County offered up a list of so-called North Carolina sanctuary cities during the legislative debate in late September, as reported by North Carolina Public Radio.

“You want to start with Durham, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Carrboro,” he said. “You know where those liberal bastions are. And if you have policies like that, who in the world could stand up and say, ‘That’s okay. We want to be a sanctuary city.’ We need to punish them. If I could, I’d take their charters.”

What passes for a sanctuary city policy in Carrboro, as an example, does not reference the term. The resolution, approved in May 2006, simply states that “it shall be the policy of the Carrboro Police Department not to arrest or take into custody persons when the sole basis for arresting or taking such persons into custody is that they have or may have committed a civil immigration violation.”

Republican politicians quickly found a visceral issue that tapped into conservative voters’ fears about minority crime and disdain for liberal big-city politicians when a 32-year-old woman named Kate Steinle was shot to death at a crowded tourist site on the Embarcadero in San Francisco on July 1. Police quickly apprehended a homeless undocumented immigrant named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez. It came to light that Lopez-Sanchez had been deported on five different occasions and had a string of felonies. The San Francisco Sheriff’s Office had released him from jail after dropping a 20-year-old marijuana charge, but had declined to honor a federal detainer from ICE.

Predictably, Donald Trump was the first presidential candidate to make an issue out of the case.

“This is something that never should have taken place,” he said in a July 4 interview on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “He was sent out of the country many times. He was a violent person. And we have many cases like this. Nobody wants to talk about it. It seems like I’m kind of a whipping post because I bring it up. And I don’t understand. Whether you’re liberal or you’re conservative. Whether you’re Republican, Democrat, why wouldn’t you talk about a problem? There’s tremendous crime. Illegal immigration is just incredible. You talk about terrorism and the terrorists, they’re gonna come in on the southern border, too, because it’s the easiest thing — you just walk right in.”

Putting an exclamation point on his tirade, Trump concluded, “The crime is raging, raging. And it’s violent. And people don’t want to talk about it. And if you talk about it you’re a racist.”

Lost in the froth of Trump’s comments, and those of his Republican rivals and other politicians, was the fact that none of Lopez-Sanchez’s prior felonies were for violent crimes: Two were for illegal entry into the country, while others were for drug offenses, according to various news reports. The weapon used in Steinle’s killing was a firearm stolen from an unattended federal Bureau of Land Management vehicle. Adding another layer of nuance, a ballistics expert hired on Lopez-Sanchez’s behalf testified that the shooting was accidental because the bullet bounced off the ground before striking Steinle, according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News. The same report said the prosecution contends the shooting was intentional, arguing Lopez-Sanchez was just a “lousy shot.” The defendant has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Trump’s Republican primary rivals quickly joined the chorus against so-called sanctuary cities, with all three candidates using Fox News to broadcast their appeals in early July.

Arguing on the House floor on July 23, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina subtly placed the killing of Kate Steinle in a racial context by drawing a corollary with a statement by President Obama about Trayvon Martin, the black unarmed Florida teenager who was killed by a neighborhood-watch volunteer in 2012.

His voice trembling with emotion, Gowdy said, “Burying a child is what each of us who has ever been called ‘mom’ or ‘dad’ fears the most. After Trayvon Martin was killed, the president said, ‘That could have been my son,’ Mr. Speaker. And when I see a picture of beautiful Kate Steinle, smiling, that could have been any of our daughters.”

State Sen. Jerry Tillman echoed the same appeal as HB 318 moved through the NC General Assembly in late September.

“32-year-old, beautiful, talented Kate Steinle would probably be alive today if San Francisco had any guts about them whatsoever, which they don’t,” he said.

And with HB 318 ratified and placed on Gov. McCrory’s desk on Sept. 30, Trump continued to amplify the call on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

“We have to get rid of these sanctuary cities,” he said. “It’s disgraceful. Because I’ve had so many friends that I’ve made. First of all, Kate magnificent Kate, shot in the back and killed in San Francisco.

“I’ve become very, very friendly with a lot of people because it’s become an important issue for me,” he continued. “The whole thing with illegal immigration and crime, it’s far worse than anyone in this room understands. Far worse. Far worse.”

While HB 318 sets the pace for a national wave of anti-sanctuary city legislation, it also insulates incumbent Republican lawmakers in North Carolina against primary challenges from the right.

“In my view, all that legislation was designed for one thing: a palm card in the Republican primary that someone at the polling place could hand out in March so they could get the most conservative parts of the electorate to support them,” said Jeff Thigpen, the Democratic register of deeds in Guilford County. “For the incumbent, it’s a way to be able to say, ‘I was hard on immigrants.’”

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After Gov. McCrory signed HB 318 into law in Greensboro in late October his staff found themselves performing damage control over the governor’s comments about serious crime committed by undocumented immigrants.

An undated letter from the governor’s community and constituent affairs office deflects responsibility for creating a climate of fear, while seeming to take a subtle shot at the news media.

“We understand there is much fear and concern by the Latino community in regards to the Protect North Carolina Workers Act,” the letter reads. “We believe it is essential that everyone clearly understand the bill, rather than through speculation and rumor. We have decided we would provide actual facts about that bill that other outlets may be misinterpreting and creating an atmosphere of fear to our immigrant communities.”

Hernando Ramirez-Santos, the executive editor of Que Pasa, said in his opinion the primary purpose of the law is “to create a bigger negative environment for the undocumented community.” He noted that undocumented people make up about a third of the overall Latino population in North Carolina.

“There are more than 300,000 undocumented residents in North Carolina, but there are almost 900,000 Hispanics,” he said. “A lot of this community has family and close friends, relatives that are undocumented. To have that environment and the policies that Gov. McCrory promotes be so negative to Hispanics and the immigrant community, it’s just absurd to create that environment. To fuel that sentiment with the anti-immigrant community and the white community that is so conservative is sad.”

The governor’s clarification letter noted that the law does not require local law enforcement to collect information on an undocumented person and that law enforcement officials may still accept community IDs if the individual has no other valid identification documents. But McCrory stuck to his guns on his preference for passports. The letter states that while matricula consular cards and ID created by local nonprofits might be more convenient, the validity of a passport is “incomparable.”

That misses an important point, Ramirez-Santos said.

“The problem with a passport is it says who you are, but it doesn’t say where you live,” he said. “With that in mind, when a police officer stops you, they will see who you are but not where you live. In the mind of the authorities, [the passport] says you are an undocumented person. Not all law enforcement know that they are not immigration authorities. ‘I don’t know who you are, so I will take you to jail.’ Once you are in jail, you can be checked; it will review with ICE if you are undocumented or documented. Of course, it will show you are undocumented.”

Relying in part on the guidance from the governor’s office, local law enforcement agencies around the Piedmont region have continued to cooperate with FaithAction to roll out the ID program.

“It may make the difference between someone getting a citation and someone having to go to jail,” Lonnie Albright, the police attorney for the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, told Triad City Beat earlier this month. Qué Pasa has played an active role in publicizing the ID drives and covering them as they take place in Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Asheboro. A Jan. 9 ID drive in Winston-Salem took place in a vacant storefront next door to Qué Pasa’s statewide headquarters on Waughtown Street. The shopping center that houses Qué Pasa and the site of the facility used for the ID drive is owned by the newspaper’s publisher, Jose Isasi.

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“We thought we were going to get 200 people because it was Friday and it was very cold; people were working on Friday,” Ramirez-Santos said. “More than 700 people showed up. It was incredible. Inside the shopping center, all the way to Waughtown Street, it was a huge line maybe seven blocks long. It was amazing that people stayed in the line all day waiting to get to the room.”

FaithAction also signed up 375 people in Greensboro in December, and the agency has another drive scheduled for Friday at the Mullin Life Center of First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro. Recent meetings in Asheboro have drawn an enthusiastic response from both the police and immigrants.

The benefits of the ID to people in the immigrant community go far beyond the practicalities of navigating daily life, Ramirez-Santos said.

“Even though they know the ID has limited use, they say it’s better to have this ID than nothing,” he said. “It’s a matter of belonging. ‘I am part of this town. I live here.’ It’s a state of mind.”