Thursday, December 21, 2017

Los Angeles, 1931-1932: A Sanctuary City

A sanctuary city is generally defined as a municipality that refuses to use its police and criminal justice system to aid in deportation of aliens.
This happened in 1931-1932, when President Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of Labor—a staunch opponent of all forms of immigration, legal and illegal— launched a campaign in Los Angeles to deport Mexicans.
Mexican government sources suggest that over 300,000 were repatriated between 1930 and 1933.
Before the Depression,  farmers, labor unions, eugenicists, and racists pushed for restrictions on Mexican immigration.
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the National Club of America for Americans thought that deporting Mexicans would free up jobs for U.S. citizens.
They were wrong. After Mexicans were rounded up and deported, unemployment shot up to 32 percent. The problem was a vicious cycle of tariff disputes with trading partners, not immigration.
The federal government, in coordination with local governments, took steps to remove Mexicans. 
In his book Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression, Abraham Hoffman describes a scene where a federal official who headed the deportation effort leaned on LA police to round-up Mexican men. 
The Chief of Police and LA County Sheriff refused. Their reasoning? They said that the federal plan identified deportees on the basis of skin color only. Local law enforcement feared lawsuits and expenses for false arrests.
The bottom line: Police— then and now— make arrests based on probable cause. Being dark skinned and speaking Spanish are not probable cause for an arrest (a requirement in the Fourth Amendment). That was true in 1931 … and it remains true in 2017.

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