Hate-watch group tried to bump Kris Kobach from congressional testimony
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| Kris Kobach |
Last year, officials from the Missouri State Highway Patrol received training from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that gave them the authority to conduct immigration investigations and detain undocumented migrants. Where do local cops get off executing immigration law? Well, in 1996 Congress passed a law with a provision called 287(g) that opened the door for county and state officials to take a class, sign an agreement and essentially become a local arm of ICE.
That program has created a storm of controversy in recent months.
In March, the Government Accountability Office released a study that criticized ICE for not adequately monitoring the program's participants, allowing for potential misuse of immigration authority by local cops and sheriffs. That came on the heels of a number of other studies, including one from the University of North Carolina, and lawsuits, like one filed by the ACLU in Arizona, that allege the program imperils civil rights and encourages racial profiling.
Enter the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
Last week, it convened a hearing on the contentious 287(g) program. When the list of witnesses came out, it was no surprise that Kris Kobach, a strong proponent of local governments getting into immigration enforcement, was on his way to Washington, D.C. But the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote a scathing letter to the committee chair, trying to bar the University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor from testifying.
The letter from the SPLC, an Alabama-based non-profit that monitors hate groups, went like this:
Dear Chairman Conyers:
It has come to our attention that Kris Kobach has
been invited to participate as a panel witness for the Joint Hearing on the
Local Enforcement of Immigration Laws... We respectfully request that the
committee reconsider the invitation.
While Mr. Kobach is listed as a law professor at the
University of Missouri, Kansas City, School of Law, we believe members also
should be aware that he is the senior counsel for the Immigration Reform Law
Institute (IRLI), the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
(FAIR). To date, FAIR and IRLI have paid Mr. Kobach $125,000 to serve as IRLI
legal counsel.
FAIR is listed as a hate group by the Southern
Poverty Law Center... Among the reasons are its acceptance of $1.2 million from
the Pioneer Fund, a group founded to promote
the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence and
genetics. FAIR has hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist
groups. It has board members who write regularly for hate publications. It
promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latino immigrants. It has produced
television programming featuring white nationalists. And John Tanton, the man who founded the
group in 1979, has a long personal history of associating with white
nationalists... In 2004, FAIR donated $10,000 to Kris Kobach's congressional
campaign in Kansas...
For all of these reasons, the Center for New
Community and the Southern Poverty Law Center are deeply disappointed that the
committee is seeking the testimony of Mr. Kobach, and urge that the invitation
be rescinded.
Sincerely,
Mark Potok
Southern Poverty Law Center
All the issues raised have been aired before, but I was interested to hear Kobach's response to being called out in front of Congress. In an e-mail, the law professor told me that the letter was "a defamatory smear" that simply re-splattered the mud flung during his 2004 run against Congressman Dennis Moore and wrongly implied he was being paid by FAIR to provide testimony. He added that he's testified before Congress eight times, without any such accusations from the SPLC.
"It was an obvious attempt to discredit what I was saying on this specific occasion, because I was the only expert witness that the Republican minority was allowed to present (versus three expert witnesses for the Democrats), and I had produced hard facts and statistics supporting the Section 287(g) program," Kobach said in the e-mail. "The opponents of Section 287(g) did not have any alternative statistics or empirical data to offer, so they chose to attack me personally and engage in slander instead."
Despite some initial controversy and tongue lashing from Democratic representatives -- that our sister paper in Phoenix wrote about here -- Kobach was given the go-ahead to testify. He emphasized that the 287(g) agreements allow local officials to address terrorism concerns, deal with violent gangs made up of illegal immigrants and restore balance to areas with high levels of undocumented workers. He said the program is so useful that 67 jurisdictions have completed the certification.
"Currently there are an estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the United States, but 5,600 special agents in ICE," he testified. "Most major cities have more police officers than that. New York City alone has approximately 37,000 police officers. The 951 state, county and local officers that assist ICE through Section 287(g) -- even if only part-time in that capacity -- provide a massive amount of assistance to ICE."
In the year after the state of Florida executed its agreement in 2002, the trained officers made 165 immigration arrests, he noted. Kobach also held up Maricopa County -- a hotbed of immigration controversy thanks to its notorious sheriff, Joe Arpaio -- as an example of the program's success.
"Thousands of illegal aliens have self-deported out of Arizona," he testified. "That progress would not have been as great without Maricopa County's Section 287(g) program. It clearly demonstrated that when federal, state and county units of government cooperate, illegal immigration can be dramatically reduced."
He also hit the House members where it hurts most: the unemployment rate.
"This Congress has done much in an attempt to create jobs one or two years in the future," he testified. "Removing unauthorized alien employees from the United States creates jobs for U.S. citizens the very next day."
To do the hearing justice, read the full report from Phoenix
New Times' Feathered Bastard.
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