What a display of malicious stupidity and ignorance. In one fell swoop, these cops have legitimized every "no snitching" campaign plaguing that city.

Newark has a very large Portuguese and Brazilian population and so does the neighboring town of Harrison, just across the river. Lots of soccer playing there, I've seen many games. I am sure there is a vast undocumented population there too.
I last lived there intermittently in the mid eighties, so by now the immigrant population has to be much larger. I also saw a lot of Peruvians and other Central and South American immigrants there. Only Spanish and Portuguese was spoken at the games.
With a population like that in and around Newark it seems obvious to me that a very large number of people with and without green cards are working in that section of Jersey since, as hard as it is for some idiots to figure it out, people show up because there are jobs, they want and need to work, they need to escape some screwy regime in the home country, maybe they are even running from a death squad, and they do the impossible and make their way to Newark, certainly no damn paradise I can attest, they keep the society going in some small way, and all together signify a large workforce and consuming group, they put their kids in the local schools, maybe in Harrison, pay very high rent in Harrison to help the landlord pay the property taxes that support the very good schools, and maybe in twenty or thirty years their kids are part of the middle class somewhere in the USA.
Why step on that? I used to commute from Luquillo, Puerto Rico to Harrison, New Jersey {we moved there because we had to go to New York City a lot and the PATH train-- the one under the Twin Towers -- went there very quickly} and I want to say that in that town at that time and probably now were really great people, and the same can be said for Newark. Undoubtedly, one of the few positive movements to bring back Newark would have to be a new infusion of immigrants.
So again, who would want to make this kind of trouble?
Is stupidity public policy now?

My wife almost got caught up in an INS sweep some years ago. One of the migra officers asked her for her identification (she was passing by the scene when it all went down). She told the guy to FO and kept on walking.

Of course, my coworker's British wife never gets hassled, and *she's* here on a green card. *My* wife speaks with no accent, but I suppose the brown skin is enough by itself to attract the attention of the clueless and ignorant.

The lesson I take from this?

White skin + accent = clearly not worth investigating
Brown skin - accent = better detain, just to be sure

Right on Tomas! I am a brown sister and I believe what you are saying.
That is why I keep telling everyone who will hear my voice that is an issue racism. It has nothing to do with real immigration issues,it is all about race.
Viva la Raza....................

mhg, the same sort of people were making the same sorts of arguments a century ago when it was my people pushing to get into this country. Their job of scapegoating is just easier now, possibly because they just look at skin color to decide who 'belongs' here and who doesn't. Back when my great-grandfather got in, the xenophobes couldn't really tell where you were from until you opened your mouth and started speaking. ;)

I honestly think that some of the xenophobes don't even care if you were born here if you happen to be Hispanic. And honestly, who among us carries hard-and-fast evidence of American citizenship on their person at all times? Is everyone to be considered suspect, or are we just going to be jerks and single out the brown folks?

Because if we're just singling out people on the basis of skin color, then yeah, that's racism.

the difference is that in time, the fair-skinned are accepted into mainstream USA, thought of as "White." yet, with non-fair peoples, no amount of time can pass where this happens. just see the current events re blacks and Latin@s. it all pops up in a quick second if the waters are stirred.

there's no way you could get these same types riled up about Irish etc now. but hundreds of years can pass and still mexicans and blacks are seen as Other. it is now, and has been since the land was stolen, about The Dark Other. the savage.

It's disturbing to me that this news story and the people who have read this focus soley on a man and his rights rather than the young woman found in a plastic bag as if she were trash. What about her rights!

Our family greives every day and still we had no answers. I am thankful to this man for finding her. And I am thankful to the police for having him turn over the photos he took of her discarded and decomposed body. I don't believe we could have survied the photos being published.

Courtney is her name, and she is missed everyday.

its a good point, rebecca, and i can see how it would bother you. i'm sorry for your pain. thank you for speaking up.

to the point tho, my site focuses very strongly on immigration matters. not so much on murder. so i hope knowing that, it is a little more understandable why the focus is where it is here.

peace,
nezua