Interesting article written by Pablo (ex-boyfriend's brother)

Where we were coming from
By Pablo Ros
(South Bend Tribune)

The summer before my senior year in college, my brother, Diego, his former girlfriend, Erica, and I were driving through Oklahoma on our way back to South Bend from Mexico City. The three of us — along with a friend of Erica’s, Amanda, who had taken a flight home to Massachusetts a few days earlier — had spent a couple of weeks vacationing in Mexico. We had visited museums and treaded on ancient ruins, bought souvenirs at outdoor marketplaces and climbed the Tepozteco.

But most of all we had relaxed in our swimsuits under the sun. It had been a carefree time.

I was at the wheel of my father’s Indiana-plated Hyundai when the police pulled me over in Oklahoma. A police officer told me I had been speeding.

Back then, my dark hair came down below my shoulders, and I kept it off my face while driving with the windows down by tying it in a red bandanna.“Where are you guys coming from?” he asked.

I would regret my answer soon enough.

“Mexico.”

Like a magic word, it quickly conjured up an almost surreal scene. First, I was asked to step out of the car, where an officer frisked me for weapons. Then, a swarm of police patrols arrived at the scene and surrounded us on every side. I consented to a search of the car. Before long, a drug-sniffing K-9 unit was inside our vehicle.

Diego - to his credit, delicately and discreetly - pointed out to me the fallacy and idiocy of my honesty and told me I shouldn't have consented to a search of our car without a proper warrant. So I went back to one of the officers and told him I had changed my mind.

We had nothing to hide, but what we were being made to go through was ridiculous. The police had found no indication that we had drugs in the car. It was clear I had been profiled.

And in the end, the police didn't even issue me a speeding ticket. It turned out I had been going just 5 mph over the speed limit.

In whichever form, profiling is an act of prejudice. And law enforcement when carried out through the eyes of prejudice isn't law enforcement.

Which is why I was appalled last week when I listened to Bill Smith, prosecutor of Decatur County in Indiana, during a talk he delivered on illegal immigration at the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council's summer conference, held this year in South Bend.

Smith used "Mexicans" and "illegals" interchangeably and referred to the Japanese as people who "love to drink and drive." That was enough to prompt me to raise an eyebrow. His dislike of foreigners became evident when he suggested that even law-abiding, tax-paying immigrants are not "local residents."

Smith told the 100 or so people in his audience, including prosecutors from more than half of Indiana's counties, that if a driver had never been licensed and was not carrying any other form of ID, then he must be an illegal immigrant.

The event was not open to the public.

At one point during his talk, in a moment of self-reflection, Smith admitted that he sounded like "some draconian a-hole."

I wouldn't have put it that way, but I approached him after his talk to clarify a few of the points he had made.

When I told him I was Mexican but that I was in the country legally, he defended his use of "Mexicans" to mean "illegals" by saying that most undocumented immigrants are Latinos.

When I asked him to clarify his comment about the Japanese, he simply replied that it was true.

When I asked him about the possibility of law enforcement officials coming across a legal immigrant or even a citizen who had never been licensed and who lacked any other form of ID, Smith stood by his earlier statement.

Finally, I asked him whether he considered his comments racist. His first reply wasn't clear. After I pressed him a second time, he replied, "They probably are, but I don't care."

As I walked away after thanking him for his time, Smith said to me that I was "biased anyway" because I'm Mexican.

Stephen Johnson, the executive director of IPAC, told me that Smith, like the other speakers at the conference, had been chosen to speak on their respective topics because they had expertise in them.

"It's something he's taken an interest in," Johnson said of Smith's expertise on illegal immigration.

Decatur County in southeast Indiana is home to about 25,000 people, of whom 98.5 percent are white. Although the most recent ethnographic data is from 2000, the population has only slightly grown since then.

In 2000, only 0.5 percent of the population was Hispanic and 0.7 percent Asian. Only 12 African Americans lived in the entire county.

Staff writer Pablo Ros: pros@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6357