Rogers : Mayor favors tougher stance against illegals
Posted on Friday, October 27, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/170908/
ROGERS — Mayor Steve Womack is reviewing an ordinance that would declare illegal immigration a public nuisance and impose fines on those employing or renting to illegal residents.
Womack asked City Attorney Ben Lipscomb to research “illegal alien enforcement,” according to an e-mail he sent to City Council members and others Wednesday morning.
Lipscomb requested a copy of an ordinance passed last month by Hazleton, Pa., as an example of an illegal-immigration law that may be useful to the city.
Womack said Thursday night that he’s frustrated by last week’s shooting of a Rogers Police Department officer during a drug search. He said illegal immigration in Rogers contributes to crime, gang and drug activity.
“It’s out of control and it needs to be addressed,” Womack said. “We need to do something now and it isn’t going to get any better.”
Detective Brian Culpepper was shot and wounded Oct. 20 as he and other officers served a search warrant at an east Rogers home.
Culpepper was among 10 officers serving the warrant at 703 E. Mimosa St. when he was hit by a bullet from a deputy’s gun. The deputy struggled with a woman and the gun went off, according to police.
After the shooting, Rogers police arrested Jose Mora on drug charges and his brother, Ricardo, on a charge of failure to appear. The men weren’t involved in the shooting, but Ricardo Mora has scuffled with police in the past, records show.
The Mora brothers and Maria Herminia Ayon-Torres, 31, have holds on them from U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, police said.
Womack wrote in the e-mail that when he sat down with the Police Department’s narcotics team after the shooting, “it became apparent that the clear majority of our problems involve illegals. This is simply unacceptable.
“ We have businesses employing them and landlords renting to them,” Womack wrote. “That said, perhaps it is time our city took a leadership position that members of Congress are apparently unwilling to take.”
U. S. Rep. John Boozman, whose 3 rd Congressional District covers Northwest Arkansas, said he’d be interested in sitting down with Womack to see what the mayor has in mind. Boozman said he understands Womack’s frustration with the federal government and said he’s tried to push for stricter immigration enforcement.
“The reality is... we put our communities in a bad position,” said Boozman, a Republican who lives in Rogers. “The federal government needs to act. These kinds of shootings are a wakeup call.”
Womack said cities can use their ability to enforce nuisance abatement powers as a way to curb illegal immigration.
“We’re well aware we are not [immigration ] agents,” he said. “However, what intrigues me is the Hazleton law is based on the premise that cities can prevent nuisances.”
Under its Illegal Immigration Relief Act, Hazleton will punish businesses that hire illegal immigrants and landlords who rent to them. The ordinance was approved by the City Council on Sept. 12 and is scheduled to take effect Wednesday.
An earlier version of the ordinance was set aside last month after the American Civil Liberties Union and Hispanic activists sued in federal court to overturn it as discriminatory and unworkable. The current version, designed to better withstand a legal challenge, puts the burden of verifying immigration status on the city, and gives businesses and landlords time to correct violations.
Since Hazleton adopted the original ordinance, about 40 other municipalities around the country have adopted similar laws or are considering them, Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta said at a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon on Tuesday.
Rogers Alderman Greg Hines, a Benton County sheriff’s deputy, said that such an ordinance could be difficult to enforce. But Rogers needs laws to protect its citizens from problems that are caused in part by illegal aliens, Hines said.
“It’s not a race issue at all,” he said.
Womack wrote in the e-mail that his actions aren’t intended to be “anti-immigrant.”
“We all know there are many wonderful immigrant families living / working here,” he wrote.
Womack said Thursday that the city has been “more than accommodating toward people who have come here looking for a way of life.”
“This community has been very patient and tolerant and understanding,” he said. “But our patience is being tested.”
In October 2003, Hispanic motorists who sued Rogers and its Police Department, claiming racial profiling, agreed on a settlement that didn’t include monetary damages.
Al Lopez, a Hispanic community liaison since moving to Northwest Arkansas in 1994, said the racial climate has improved in Rogers. Womack’s e-mail is a step backward, said Lopez, a Rogers resident.
“I don’t think Mayor Womack would do something like that. I can’t believe it,” said Lopez, who hosts a Spanish-language radio show on Springdale station KREB-FM. “I don’t think that’s the kind of attention we want to bring back to Rogers, especially when people are trying to build bridges.”
Margarita Solorzano, executive director of the Arkansas Hispanic Woman’s Organization, said Rogers shouldn’t take a collective punitive action against its immigrant community based solely on the Oct. 20 shooting.
“That would be very unfortunate, taking such action based on the single incident,” Solorzano said. “The whole community would feel the impact. Economically, Latinos would stop buying and stop doing business in the city, and the entire Latino community would feel like they were being targeted.”
Womack said that the city’s economy could survive without illegal immigrants working in Rogers.
“We may have to start to choose between an economic impact and a quality of life,” Womack said. “I know where I stand.”
But Raymond Burns, president and chief executive officer of the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce, said businesses shouldn’t be unfairly penalized for employing illegal immigrants, if they do everything they legally can do to determine the status of their employees.
“This is a federal problem and shouldn’t be on the backs of businesses doing everything they can,” he said.
Joe McCutchen, a retired pharmacist in Fort Smith, said he favors Womack’s position.
McCutchen joined the Minuteman Project that patrolled the U. S. border as a celebration of Independence Day this year.
“We must stop this illegal third-world invasion which is making this country a dumping ground,” McCutchen said. To contact this reporter: lboch@arkansasonline. com
––––– • –––––Information for this article was contributed by Michelle Bradford, Sharon C. Fitzgerald, John Krupa and Laura Kellams of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; and Peter Jackson of The Associated Press.