Lawmakers out to legalize racial profiling
Senate Bill 172 would amend the Ohio Revised Code to allow federal, state or local law enforcement to arrest any “person who is, or is suspected of being, unlawfully present in the United States.”
What is not clear in the language of the bill is the basis of what leads law enforcement officers to suspect someone of being in this country illegally.
In Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al. (2013) and Melendres v. Arpaio, (2015) such practices were determined to constitute racial profiling, and be unconstitutional.
Then, there is the issue of due process, which the Trump administration, contrary to decades of legal precedent, insists undocumented aliens are not entitled to. Already, undocumented immigrants in Ohio are being denied due process, and passage of this bill will only exacerbate the problem.
Sponsored by senators Kristina D. Roegner, Andrew O. Brenner, Jerry C. Cirino, Theresa Gavarone, Terry Johnson, Sandra O’Brien and Tim Schaffer, Senate Bill 172 as it stands is deeply flawed, as its nonexistent language as to just what constitutes “suspicion” will inevitably lead to racial profiling and U.S. citizens being taken into custody and detained under that “suspicion.
They will be denied the due process all persons, undocumented immigrant or U.S. citizen, are entitled to.
Mark Schrider, Columbus
Cover Israel and Palestine
What is it about genocide that the Columbus Dispatch editors don’t understand? Israel is killing hundreds of unarmed men, women and children every week.
They have also blocked food supplies to the extent that Palestinians are starving, and when they try to receive meager food supplies, the Israelis kill them, including shooters targeting children.
They have killed nearly 60,000 people, mostly women and children. Israel has destroyed virtually every hospital, school, church and home in Gaza. They are using starvation and murdering civilians without punishment.
I’m pretty sure that I am not the only Dispatch reader to have commented on this, but I don’t see any letters to the editor being published about this ongoing issue and I have little reason to believe this letter will be published, but I thought I would give it a last try.
Kenneth J. Broussard, Columbus
Jews aren’t safe
On July 23, 50 French Jewish campers from the Kineret Club in Spain were expelled from Spanish Vueling Airlines, allegedly for singing songs in Hebrew.
When asked to stop, they apparently did, but meanwhile, their female director was handcuffed, and their phones were confiscated to prevent them filming the incident.
This violence and unnecessary force has yet to be reported in mainstream news.
Imagine the surviving kids from the Texas Camp Mystic tragedy singing on a plane, considered disruptive and being kicked off. I can pretty much guarantee the songs in Hebrew were about peace, as many Hebrew songs are.
Details? There are few.
Mainstream media, including the Dispatch, continues to fuel hatred against Jews and Israel and omits or minimizes atrocities against Israelis and Jews, ceasefires repeatedly rejected by Hamas, or hostages, including dead ones still in captivity.
You can’t resist printing pictures of starving children in Gaza, which is heartbreaking, but it is so easy to blame Israel when the UN and Hamas are not distributing the food in trucks lined up and ready to bring aid to those children.
So, as usual, Jews everywhere are not safe, not even kids singing.
Linda Kalette Schottenstein, Bexley
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio lawmakers out to legalize racial profiling. US citizens could be detained | Letters
Reporting by Letters to the Editor / The Columbus Dispatch
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