Florida Fights the Alien Invasion
Greg Kaye
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The New American, November 13, 1995
Leftist bureaucrats at the Civil Rights Commission have employed Gestapo tactics to halt the efforts of Florida citizens to stem the flood of illegal immigrants. |
But FLA-187 has drawn the ire of the Civil Rights Commission
When a tyrant or an organized crime boss issues an "invitation," the invited doesn't dare decline. In August of this year the United States Civil Rights Commission extended that kind of an invitation to leaders of the FLA-187 Committee, a grassroots immigration reform organization in Florida. FLA-187 is collecting signatures for a referendum similar to California's Proposition 187, a state measure which cut off welfare, education, and some public health benefits for illegal aliens. The Florida group's activities are legal, peaceful, and protected by both the U.S. Constitution and Florida state constitution. However, their efforts have earned the unwanted -- and constitutionally unauthorized -- attention of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Leaders of FLA-187 were asked by the commission to appear at a federally sponsored hearing in Miami which would examine the role of their petition drive in creating "racial and ethnic tension" in Florida. The "invitations" came in the form of federal subpoenas which stated: "YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to be and appear before the United States Commission on Civil Rights." They were further commanded "to bring with you and produce before said Commission ... any document, included but not limited to, reports, studies, memoranda, policy statements, press releases, and any other writings, produced by or on behalf of the Florida 187 Committee, Inc.," and materials which would include the names of key supporters of the proposed immigration referendum. "HEREOF FAIL NOT," the subpoena advised, "as you will answer your default under the pains and penalties in such cases provided for" in federal law.
Open Borders to Criminals
FLA-187 was created by Boca Raton attorney Rob Ross and a handful of dedicated volunteers, who have become alarmed by the escalating social and economic problems created in Florida by uncontrolled illegal immigration. Official estimates place the illegal immigrant population in Florida at 400,000, but this is considered a "soft" figure by students of the problem. Among that population can be found thriving criminal subcultures. Additionally, huge numbers of illegals receive welfare benefits from the state of Florida. Much of the state's illegal alien population is created by the pestiferous regime in Communist Cuba. The UN-imposed embargo and subsequent occupation of Haiti has further exacerbated Florida's problems.
During the 1994 Florida governor's race, liberal incumbent Democrat Lawton Chiles capitalized on voter outrage over illegal immigration by suing the federal government for $1.5 billion to help offset the costs of being forced to subsidize illegals. However, Chiles has not taken action to address the problem of immigration, preferring instead to redistribute the costs of that problem to the nation at large.
Rich Van Billard, a recently retired, highly decorated Metro-Dade police sergeant, is among those who have joined FLA-187's effort to deal with the problem of unchecked immigration. Twenty-five years of service on the streets of Dade County taught Van Billard some hard lessons about the link between immigration and escalating violent crime. He is convinced that the consequences of the immigration invasion are profoundly serious:
The federal government is responsible for our borders. They've failed miserably. I witnessed the consequences of the Mariel Boat Lift [in Florida]. Someone's not doing their job. When people see their government failing to meet its responsibility, then we have the right to petition our government for redress, and to make them do the right thing .... If we fail to gain control of our borders and destiny, then the greatness of America will disappear before our very eyes.
In January of this year, FLA-187 registered with the state of Florida as a political action committee and began to draft four proposed amendments to the state constitution modeled upon California's Proposition 187. The proposed amendments would:
- Exclude illegal aliens from public benefits and social services.
- Exclude illegal aliens from public educational institutions.
- Mandate state and local governmental entities to cooperate with immigration authorities in enforcing federal law.
- Establish English as Florida's official language, and require that bureaucrats either develop a proficiency in English or lose their positions.
To earn a place on the state ballot, each proposed initiative must be supported by a petition containing the names of 400,000 registered voters. Every proposed measure is also subject to review by the state supreme court.
FLA-187's organizers were familiar with the background of California's Proposition 187 and anticipated militant opposition from the "open borders" affiliate of the "social justice" industry -- and that opposition quickly materialized.
The Usual Suspects
Shortly after FLA-187 was organized, Florida became afflicted with a state chapter of the "Committee for Dignity and Justice for Immigrants." The groups professing "solidarity" with the committee compose a rogue's gallery of the radical left: the National Lawyer's Guild (officially recognized by a congressional committee as the "legal bulwark of the Communist Party"), the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialist Organization, the American Friends Service Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the Center for Community Change in Washington, DC, etc.
The Committee for Dignity's "Mission Statement" displays a fluent grasp of the language of Marxist class warfare. It accuses opponents of uncontrolled immigration of using "undocumented" (read: illegal) immigrants as "scapegoats" for the country's "social and economic problems" and seeking to "create a class of persons without rights." "Denial of basic services to a class of people is immoral and inhumane," the statement asserts -- only to contradict itself immediately by declaring, "We reject the idea that any significant number of undocumented immigrants are drawn to the U.S. to take advantage of government programs...." In other words, the statement insists that illegals aren't here to receive the welfare subsidies which they have a "right" to, and cutting off the subsidies they aren't here to receive is "inhumane."
The statement dispenses with legal and moral distinctions between immigrants who obey the law and those who break it, rejecting as "divisionism" the effort to distinguish "between the documented and undocumented" for purposes of public policy. Further, it argues that enforcement of immigration laws amounts to "official discrimination" against "undocumented" immigrants. "In today's global economy," the statement asserts, "the idea that 'an injury to one is an injury to all' is not merely a moral guide but an imperative for survival." The statement concludes with a resolve "to educate immigrant and native communities about the effects of anti-immigrant measures, and mobilize public sentiment in favor of the civil rights of immigrants." In short, the Committee for Dignity would invoke "civil rights" in an effort to subvert American immigration laws.
FLA-187 and the Committee for Dignity squared off in the arena of public opinion -- and FLA-187 began to win the argument. A recently published poll conducted by the highly regarded Mason-Dixon polling firm indicated that 65 percent of Florida voters supported FLA-187's proposed amendments to the state constitution; this included a solid majority (58 percent) of Florida voters of Hispanic origin. In August, with the efforts of FLA-187 beginning to pay off, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights decided to intervene.
Exceeding a Mandate
Established under the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is composed of eight commissioners -- four appointed by the President, four by Congress -- who investigate "civil rights" issues and offer recommendations to the President and Congress. As defined by statute, the commission is to investigate complaints that citizens are being deprived of the right to vote or denied any of the multiplying entitlements supposedly provided by the "Equal Protection Clause" of the 14th Amendment. However, its investigative mandate only covers matters which involve U.S. citizens, a category which by definition excludes illegal aliens.
In recent years, the Civil Rights Commission has enlarged its job description to include matters which have little if any connection to "civil rights." Its present catalog of publications includes such reports as Nativism Rekindled: A Report on the Effort to Make English Colorado's Official Language; Who is Guarding the Guardians? A Report on Police Practices; and The Administration of Justice for Homosexual Persons in New Orleans. In short, the commission is inclined to see an abridgement of "civil rights" in every organized effort by American citizens to resist the gospel of political correctness.
The current commission chairperson, Mary Frances Berry, is a longtime Democrat and "civil rights" activist who was vice chair of the commission in the last year of the Carter Administration. In 1977, while serving as Assistant Secretary for Education at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Ms. Berry displayed her devotion to "civil rights" by publishing a paean to Communist China entitled The Chinese Experience in Education: What America Stands to Learn. When her enthusiasm for Maoist-style "education" was greeted with outrage even from some unrepentant liberals, Berry responded: "I do hope ... that we have moved far enough from the anti-Communist crusade of the 1950s to feel secure enough to consider ideas, whatever the country of origin."
In 1982, as vice chair of the commission, Ms. Berry co-authored a book which extolled Marxism as a remedy for the problems of American blacks. Dismayed that black Americans, like most other Americans, have been resolutely anti-Communist, Berry wrote that blacks have been subjected "to a massive barrage of propaganda from the American news media, [and] few of them know about Russia's constitutional safeguards for minorities, the extent of equality of opportunity, or the equal provision of social services to its citizens."
President Reagan offered Berry an opportunity to promote her pro-Marxist views in the free market of ideas by dismissing her from her post on the Commission in 1983, but she successfully sued for reinstatement. The following year, Berry issued a joint proclamation with commissioner Bladina Ramirez which included the statement that "civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them." Although Berry found herself frequently stymied by other members of the commission, she gained new influence for her racist and pro-Marxist views with her elevation to commission chair by Bill Clinton in 1993.
Vice Chair Cruz Reynoso also presents solid leftist credentials. In 1986, Reynoso acquired the dubious distinction of being the first associate justice of the California supreme court to be voted out of office in more than 50 years. He has served on the board of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the La Raza Lawyers Association, both of which are radical, foundation-funded groups and vital elements of the "open borders" lobby. Reynoso was a high-profile opponent of California's Proposition 187 and publicly vilified opponents of immigration reform.
The Civil Rights Commission selected Miami as the site of a public hearing as part of an ongoing commission study entitled "Racial and Ethnic Tensions in American Communities -- Poverty, Inequality, and Discrimination." According to commission spokesman Charles Rivera, "Miami was picked because of clear indications of racial tension. And we want to find out the degree to which immigration is a contributing factor to racial tensions [in Florida]."
Note well that neither the title nor the announced purposes of the commission's hearing takes into account the difference between legal and illegal immigration, or addresses the failure of the federal government to enforce existing laws and preserve the integrity of America's borders. The commission was interested in discussing racial tension and the causes thereof -- and the Committee for Dignity was ready and willing to play the "race card" against principled opponents of illegal immigration.
Gestapo Tactics
On August 4th, officials from the Civil Rights Commission called Rob Ross and two other immigration reform activists -- JoAnn Peart and Enos Schera -- requesting "cooperation" in the Miami hearings, which had been scheduled for September 14th-15th. Mrs. Peart, a Dade County housewife, was particularly unsettled to hear that the federal government was ordering her to appear before a committee to offer detailed testimony about her activities as a private citizen.
In a letter to Representative Mark Foley (R-FL), Mrs. Peart described her experiences with commission representatives. She informed Congressman Foley that in her August 4th phone conversation with commission staffer Cecilia Chin, she agreed to participate in a phone interview four days later; it was during the second conversation that Mrs. Peart began to sense misgivings. "I became suspicious during the interview when the staffers began pressing me on questions relating to the size of the membership of Floridians for Immigration Control [the immigration group with which Peart is involved]," she recalled. "They asked about the specifics concerning our activities, and, even though I doubted the relevance of those inquiries, I remained cooperative."
Ten days later, Ms. Chin called back to inform Mrs. Peart that she had been "selected to testify" at the Miami hearings. When Peart suggested that she would "consider the invitation," Chin informed her that her presence could be compelled by subpoena. Peart writes: "I felt that she was attempting to intimidate me, and I asserted that I did not appreciate those tactics. I then said 'good-bye.'" Chin called back several times that same day, and the tone of the conversations became more confrontational. At one point, when Mrs. Peart refused to supply her home address, Chin threatened to employ a private investigator to locate her home.
Mrs. Peart expressed to Representative Foley her astonishment that an entity of the federal government could take such intimate interest in her activities as a private citizen:
I am simply a U.S. citizen and resident of Florida who became active in the immigration reform movement in July, 1994. I do not pretend to be an expert ... and have never represented myself as an "expert" in the field. Further, I have not personally "denied" anyone's civil rights. I have not witnessed a situation where anyone else had "denied" another's civil rights, nor do I seek to justify such behavior. Since I am not an expert and have no first-hand information relating to the ostensible purpose of the hearings, then I do not understand why I am being threatened by an employee of the federal government with forced attendance at the Miami Hearings.
The feds were serious about their "invitation." On August 25th, Peart, Ross, and Schera received letters from the commission which advised them, "As a matter of practice, the commission issues subpoenas to witnesses within its jurisdiction. Within the next 1-3 weeks, a U.S. Marshal will serve you with a subpoena issued by the Commission for your testimony and/or production of documents." When Peart was served her subpoena, she noticed that the federal marshal who delivered the document made a point of writing down the license plate numbers of the cars parked near her home.
The subpoena itself demanded nearly every scrap of paper relating to FLA-187 and its allies and acknowledged, "This information will be used as part of official records published in the form of transcripts [and] reports" and thus available to the public. Further, the subpoena specified, "Disclosure of information is mandatory. Refusal to obey a subpoena could result in a finding of contumacy by the Commission and enforcement of the subpoena in a U.S. District Court."
In short, a commission chaired by a radical pro-Marxist and co-chaired by a venomous opponent of immigration reform was using subpoena power -- backed by the threat of criminal sanctions -- to compel FLA-187 to make all of its records available for public dissemination. Of course, this information would be tremendously valuable to the pro-illegal immigration lobby, including its radical violent wing. Rob Ross and other FLA-187 members vividly recalled that supporters of California's Proposition 187 frequently received death threats and were targeted for harassment by their opponents.
Some supporters of California's Proposition 187 have endured harassment from the federal government. Three days before the measure was voted on by the California electorate, co-author Barbara Coe received a visit from the FBI. For six hours Coe was interrogated about accusations that she had "violated the civil rights" of voters. Her alleged offense had been to compose and distribute flyers expressing concerns about voting fraud by illegal aliens. Coe's case was not unique, as federal harassment of immigration reform activists in California continued after the election as well.
Shortly after the passage of Proposition 187 by a resounding majority, Federal Judge Mariana Pfaelzer issued a decree blocking the measure's implementation. This act of naked judicial arrogance was galling to millions of Californians, including Horacio Grana, an American of Argentine origin who legally immigrated to the United States more than a quarter of a century ago. "I have lived in this country legally for 26 years, and I am very proud to be an American citizen," Grana wrote in a letter to the judge. "How is it possible that judges like yourself even attempt to support those people who break our laws?"
Grana suggested that Judge Pfaelzer was unfit for office and should resign. Nothing in Grana's letter could be construed as threatening or even impolite. Nonetheless, in late January, Grana received a visit from two federal marshals who quizzed him at length about his letter.
Congressional Reaction
Noting that there was an apparent pattern of federal harassment of immigration reform activists, Rob Ross decided that FLA-187 should take the offensive. Ross, Peart, and Schera took their experiences to the local press and contacted Representative Charles Canady (R-FL), chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. On September 9th, the story of the feds' harassment of FLA-187 broke, and Canady dispatched a scathing letter to Mary Matthews of the Civil Rights Commission. Wrote Canady:
It is my understanding that individuals engaged in legitimate and Constitutionally-protected political activities have been served with subpoenas to compel attendance against their will and with a two-page detailed request for internal records and documents regarding their First Amendment-protected activities. I have serious concerns that these actions have had the effect of chilling the lawful exercise of First Amendment rights by citizens. In addition, it creates the appearance that the powers of the Commission are being used to target individuals based on the content of their political advocacy.
Representative Canady also made reference to the fact that the marshal who served Peart's subpoena noted the license plate numbers of the family's cars and observed, "To respond with fearfulness to this sort of tactic is not irrational. Indeed, such tactics are possibly calculated to create fear." Remarkably, the September 11th Washington Times reported that three commissioners essentially agreed with Canady's assessment. Commissioner Constance Homer objected, "I think the subpoenas the staff has issued are intrusive, heavy-handed, and chilling of speech and association." However, commissar Berry remained unrepentant.
Ross, an experienced civil rights litigator (before moving to Florida, he was a county prosecutor in Essex County, New Jersey), realized that FLA-187 needed more than publicity to deter the Commission. Accordingly, he traveled to Washington, DC in early September to prepare a formal complaint against the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. On September 11th, Ross completed a 25-page complaint on behalf of Peart, Schera, and himself, and prepared to file it in federal district court the following day. However, news of the impending suit was leaked to Chairperson Berry, and she hastily faxed letters to the three potential litigants "relieving" them of the subpoenas and issuing a genuine invitation to appear voluntarily at the Miami hearing. All three politely declined.
The leadership of FLA-187 recognized that further steps to prevent federal harassment would be necessary: It has drafted a proposed resolution for the Florida State Legislature which describes the commission's actions and demands that the federal government "immediately cease and desist harassment, intimidation, and obstruction of Florida residents engaged in their constitutionally protected right to petition for redress .... and, furthermore, [to] refrain from abusive interference with the internal processes of the sovereign state of Florida."
Representative Canady and seven other congressmen also sent a sternly worded letter to President Clinton describing the incident and stating: "We have serious concerns and questions about the tactics of this Commission and the manner in which it utilizes taxpayer dollars on behalf of the Federal Government." Canady has promised to conduct oversight hearings into the commission's activities in the near future.
Open-Borders Pep Rally
The Miami Hearings went forward as scheduled without the involvement of FLA-187 -- and, as anticipated, they were little more than a taxpayer-funded pep-rally for the open-borders lobby. The topics and witness list were carefully crafted to produce the pre-ordained conclusion that immigration reform activism, not illegal immigration, has created "racial and ethnic tension." Of the 37 participants who had been scheduled, 34 appeared -- and 31 of them were liberals. (This disproportion could not be blamed on the refusal of FLA-187 representatives to participate).
At the Miami hearings, THE NEW AMERICAN interviewed Civil Rights Commission Chairperson Berry about the commission's treatment of FLA-187. Berry insisted that the incident was simply "routine fact-finding" and that the controversy was "a flap blown out of proportion. These '187' people aren't very sophisticated; these people overreacted." She singled out JoAnn Peart for individualized abuse, dismissing her account as "lies." Berry also defended the participation of Commissioner Reynoso -- a high-profile antagonist of immigration reform activists -- in the hearings.
Although Berry is serenely convinced that her commission did nothing wrong, its actions have been castigated by liberal and conservative alike -- including (as noted above) members of the commission itself. The Palm Beach Post editorialized that the commission's treatment of FLA-187 is symptomatic of "the dangerous arrogance which infects bureaucracies. We're in trouble if the civil rights commission uses subpoenas so casually that it threatens the same rights the commission exists to protect." Ezola Foster, a black American and president of Americans for Family Values, is even more direct: "The civil rights commission would do well to promote the civil rights of Americans. Otherwise, it should be disbanded."
The commission's behavior even provoked criticism from Robyn Blumner, director of the Florida branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If the commission sought the views of [FLA-187 leaders], a simple invitation would have sufficed," Blumner wrote in a newspaper column. However, "Once a governmental request becomes a demand, constitutional rights are implicated .... [The commission] should not be compelling testimony, nor should it be sifting through a political organization's internal documents."
Having presented a compelling indictment of the commission's actions, however, Blumner sought to commend Berry:
One has to give credit to Mrs. Berry for reeling in the commission's staff. She demonstrated a sensitivity to individual rights rarely found in government. After all, it isn't often we see an arm of the state willing to police itself -- placing internal limits on its own power.
Although the point is lost on self-appointed "civil libertarians" like Blumner, the Constitution does not authorize any element of the federal government to "police itself" or place "internal limits on its own power." All entities of the federal government are to be limited by law and regulated through checks and balances and ultimately through accountability to the people. This is demonstrated by the fact that it was not Berry's beneficence which ended the commission's persecution of FLA-187, but rather the threat of a congressional investigation.
The Civil Rights Commission is a ripe target for the budget-cutting axe. It is also a constitutionally indefensible entity. Americans who seek to reform our country's immigration laws do not need authorization from Washington or permission from a politburo of "civil rights" ambulance chasers to do so.
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