Remember the mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, who made national news by taking a stand against the illegal aliens swarming into his town? Hazleton's city councilenacted a law to evict the illegal criminals, but now a federal court has overturned it. That's how it works in America's peculiar "democracy" -- the people are "free" as long as they don't do anything that upsets their masters. This is reminiscent of Prop. 187 in California and all the other times a court has negated the hard work of grassroots activists working on causes that don't fit in the Cultural Marxist agenda.
Hazleton loses bid to evict illegal workers
By Milan Simonich, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The small city of Hazleton, which created a national sensation by approving laws to evict illegal immigrant workers, violated the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
District Judge James Munley said even illegal immigrants have rights in America, and Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta was wrong to try to force them out of his town by targeting them through city ordinances.
"Even if federal law did not conflict with Hazleton's measures, the city could not enact an ordinance that violates the rights the Constitution guarantees to every person in the United States, whether legal resident or not," Judge Munley wrote in his 206-page decision.
Mr. Barletta said the city plans to appeal. He blames illegal immigrants for increases in violent crime, drug trafficking and the emergence of street gangs in his northeastern Pennsylvania city of 30,000.
His most explosive allegation was that two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic murdered a 29-year-old man on a Hazleton street last year. But the district attorney of Luzerne County this month dismissed the charges against both suspects, saying he did not have enough evidence to prosecute them.
After the murder in May 2006, Mr. Barletta persuaded Hazleton's city council to approve ordinances to drive illegal immigrants out of town.
The laws would have forced every tenant to obtain a residency permit at city hall. They also would have penalized landlords who rented to illegal immigrants and businesses that hired them.
Judge Munley, though, ruled that a town cannot take immigration policy into its own hands.
"Whatever frustrations officials of the city of Hazleton may feel about the current state of federal immigration enforcement, the nature of the political system in the United States prohibits the city from enacting ordinances that disrupt a carefully drawn federal statutory scheme," Judge Munley wrote.
He issued his ruling after a trial earlier this year in which the American Civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund challenged Hazleton's laws as unfair attacks on dark-skinned newcomers.
Vic Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and lead counsel in the lawsuit against Hazleton, said Mr. Barletta was quick to blame illegal immigrants for every problem, from crime to crowded classrooms.
"Mayor Barletta's claims are greatly exaggerated," he said.
Rudy Espinal, a Hazleton resident originally from the Dominican Republic, said fear and bigotry escalated because of the city laws.
"There was an incredible amount of division caused by this," said Mr. Espinal, who admits he once was an illegal immigrant. He eventually obtained citizenship and now is a real estate salesman in Hazleton. His family operates one of the town's groceries.
Mr. Walczak said immigration reform is a national problem that must be solved by Congress. He said he hoped Judge Munley's ruling would discourage other cities from targeting illegal immigrants.
He estimated about 100 cities in the country have approved their own immigration ordinances. But many have not been enforced pending a ruling in the Hazleton case, which was the first in the country to go to trial.
Judges have issued injunctions to stop immigration laws from taking effect in another half-dozen cities, Mr. Walczak said.
Judge Munley said there is no doubt that Latinos from New York and New Jersey poured into Hazleton after the terrorist attacks of 2001. He accepted anecdotal evidence purporting that the city's population, though listed at 22,000 by the U.S. Census Bureau, actually is 30,000 or more.
Mr. Barletta says Hazleton has an underground population of illegal immigrants who are crowding schools, overrunning the hospital emergency room and committing violent crimes in once-peaceful neighborhoods.
Mr. Barletta, a Republican who has been mentioned as a possible congressional candidate in 2008, became a national figure because of the immigration debate. But Judge Munley said the mayor's attempt to regulate immigration at the local level was improper, even if those he targeted entered the United States illegally.<!-- Ed Yozwick/Post-Gazette
-->
<HR>
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07208/804844-85.stm
