On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said that the Texas immigration law will lead to racial profiling and people should “think back to the images of those local law enforcement agents, on horseback, whipping Haitians,” and said that “historically, law enforcement, especially local law enforcement, has never done right when it came down to policing people of color. And if we think about the history of what policing was and the slave patrols, the history of it says it all, it was always about going after people of color.”
Crockett said that the average state police officer won’t know who is in the country illegally. She added, “It was interesting because I saw an interview that one of the sheriffs at the border did, and he basically said, I do understand that there will be an inclination with this law to engage in racial profiling, so what we’re going to do is, we’re going to do a lot more training. But, let me tell you something, we’ve seen it, you said it’s the new show me your papers, we’ve seen it in Arizona. We’ve seen what happens when they tried it in New York. I guess they’re deciding that a third time is a charm, so, let’s just go ahead and try it in Texas as well. But every single time that we’ve tried this, we have failed. Not to mention, we know the history of policing in this country, we know that racial profiling — now, while we’re talking about immigrants, so we’re more than likely going to be talking about those of Hispanic persuasion that are really going to be targeted because of this law. But historically, law enforcement, especially local law enforcement, has never done right when it came down to policing people of color. And if we think about the history of what policing was and the slave patrols, the history of it says it all, it was always about going after people of color.”
Crockett continued, “And the fact that our Supreme Court actually did the right thing for two seconds by placing it on hold, and then, at the last minute, decided that it could go forward as they are going through the appeals process is really shameful, especially since, here, recently, we had a situation in El Paso where a United States citizen family, was run off the road simply because there were local law enforcement that thought that they were illegal migrants.”
She added, “[A]s you talk about the racial profiling, right now, we’re talking a lot about Haiti, and if people think back to the images of those local law enforcement agents, on horseback, whipping Haitians, Haitians also came through that exact same pathway. So, it’s another failure to really consider this. But obviously, we are consistently having these issues where we don’t respect federal law, specifically if, on the federal level, the Democrats are in control. This is what we keep doing. It’s all about the state’s rights now, right? But this is a federal issue.”
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