State Representative Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, criticized a speaker Wednesday at a public hearing on a bill that would allow law enforcement in the state to carry out immigration enforcement.
“When you talk about scaring people, and you talk about the fear; when you get up here and say it’s probable cause of somebody’s color of skin—that initiates fear that there is absolutely zero legal basis for,” Simpson said. “And that rates a fear of interactions with law enforcement when there is no probable cause … When you get up and say these things those have repercussions.”
Simpson’s comments came in response to Rev. Kevin Thomas, senior pastor at First Church Birmingham, who told the committee about his adopted daughter from Guatemala who is scared to leave the house under the current immigration enforcement climate.
“She refuses to drive … She sees the news, she sees what’s going on and simply because of the color of her hair, the color of her skin, she is nervous about being in public,” Thomas said. “Her parents are nervous as well. I try not to let her leave the house without her passport; U.S. citizens in our country are not supposed to have to show papers in public, you know that—but that’s a fear that we live with.”
Thomas said the fear had primarily been running into federal ICE officers, but worried that HB13 by State Representative Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, would make it so that any law enforcement officer can basically be an ICE officer.
HB13, dubbed the Laken Riley Act after the Congressional bill of the same name and for a Georgia girl murdered by a man in the U.S. illegally, would allow local law enforcement to enter into memorandums of understanding with ICE or the Department of Homeland Security to enact immigration enforcement.
Lawmakers weren’t done accusing speakers of ulterior motives.
After Diane Oraif, a former immigration attorney, spoke to the committee, State Representative Russell Bedsole, R-Alabaster, wondered aloud whether she was inciting fear for profit.
“You by trade, ma’am—and that you have done in some of your statements have done the same and incited as well—I would stand to believe here that you could financially profit from inciting that fear in these people, that they are going to come to you as for protection,” Bedsole said. “For you to come here today and make these comments—which I believe to this committee were a little bit disrespectful in your tone and tenor anyway—that I find disrespectful to the law enforcement community who are out there doing the right thing.”
Oraif had spoken about a time during 2011 when Alabama lawmakers passed HB56 cracking down on immigration enforcement when people lined her law offices. She clarified Wednesday that she is semi-retired and is not actively taking on immigration cases.
Democrats on the committee cut in to defend the concerns of the speakers, all four of which opposed the bill.
“I don’t want anybody to mistake that there is a very long and significant history, not just in this country but in the state of Alabama, of people being racially profiled; so your daughter’s fear is not unfounded,” State Representative Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, told Thomas . “I don’t want anyone to believe that your fear, or your testimony, is irrational or unreasonable.”
State Representative Prince Chestnut, D-Selma, pointed to the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “perceived ethnicity and limited English proficiency” can establish reasonable suspicion for immigration stops.
“For us to act as though race and ethnicity would not play a role in this situation is to be like ostriches and put our heads in the sand,” Chestnut said.
The committee will likely bring the bill back up for a vote next week.
