Hamilton County Ohio Sheriff and the ACLU

The above linked La Prensa story is not about Lucas County, however with the recent focus and discussion on immigration, I felt it was an article that might be of interest.

No matter which side of the immigration issue you are on, this article clearly points out part of the problem which started with a phone call:

“I’m working out here on a construction site and there’s about 20, 30 Mexicans and about five or six [U.S.] Americans and we’re about ready to all fight because they’re all illegal aliens out here and we’re Americans and they’re out here taking our jobs,” the man said in the call to the sheriff's office.

When deputies asked the men for identification, some of them said they had none and others offered papers that Capt. Norm Lewis said were “obviously bogus.” The men were detained and interviewed by investigators. They were released by 11:00 p.m. without being charged.

Now, the American Civil Liberties Union and federal officials are questioning whether the deputies had the right to detain the men in the first place.

Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones has insisted his office acted appropriately, saying the men were detained because they could not be identified and because of a communications barrier. Jones said the case has been referred to immigration officials and the sheriff’s office plans to continue an investigation to find the men’s employer.

But Richard Wilkens, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Cincinnati office, said that, generally, local authorities can only take undocumented individuals into custody if they are being charged with violating state law.

There's more at the title link, and it appears despite Sheriff Jones statement that the case has been referred to immigration officials, it also appears immigration officials did not do anything after they were notified that the Sheriff's department were holding these men. If you refuse to give identification to a police officer in certain situations you can be detained, that was established by the Supreme Court in 1968 here in Ohio with Terry V Ohio. In 2004 in the case Hiibel V Nevada the Supreme Court took this further stating that "stop and identify" laws were constitutional.

While I personally question the personal freedom aspect of these "stop and identify" statutes, if they are being used on legal citizens, and have been held as consitutional it's going to come down to why were the illegal immigrants questioned in the first place. Which at first glance given it was the result of a phone call on a possible physical altercation? What was the Sheriff supposed to do? Be told "We are illegal immigrants" then just let them go? If that's the case than anyone who doesn't want to identify themselves under that scenario might want to consider that...

I realize there are some underlying issues in Hamilton County but on the basis of this one situation alone, as is reported, I'm not sure what the alternative could have been.