Port Townsend, WA, passes Border Patrol resolution calling for moratorium

6/5/2009
City of Port Townsend seeks 'suspension' of Border Patrol activities here; 6-1 vote asks Obama, Congress to review legality, 'opportunity costs' of checkpoints and other tactics

By Barney Burke of The Leader

The Port Townsend City Council is sending a resolution to President Obama and Congress asking for a suspension of expanded U.S. Border Patrol on the Olympic Peninsula pending a review of the utility and legality of those practices. Adopted 6-1 on June 1 with Laurie Medlicott voting "no," the resolution also calls for "a reformed approach toward securing our border which focuses on interdiction at the border, preserves constitutional protections and respects local law enforcement."

Jackie Aase, chairwoman of the League of Women Voters of Jefferson County, was the first of 10 speakers on the issue Monday night. She had just returned from the organization's state convention in Tacoma. As a result of that meeting, the league's state organization is lobbying its national group to lobby Congress to investigate the policies of the Border Patrol, she said. "Most people hadn't heard of what was going on over here," Aase said of checkpoints operated on Olympic Peninsula highways last year. That practice - and the practice of contacting people in churches, on buses and in other locations - has been opposed by locals who feel the Border Patrol is not operating within the confines of the Constitution.

Port Townsend resident Carl Nomura spoke of losing his citizenship and being sent to an internment camp during World War II because he is a Japanese American. "I personally have been victimized by the 'reverse law,'" he said, "guilty until proven innocent. Why not let them have a better life," said Nomura of granting amnesty to people who have not immigrated here legally. After 9/11, Nomura continued, he was "profiled" for having brown skin when he tried to board an airplane. "Everybody there was brown," he said of the people detained prior to boarding.

Also addressing the council was Andrew Reding, who works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's asylum program, speaking as a private citizen. Reding said he believes in the agency's goal of stopping terrorism, and much of his job is making sure asylum seekers aren't terrorists. But deporting illegal immigrants is "cruel and heartless," he said. Taymere Perkins spoke up for the Border Patrol and tough immigration policies. He said it's important to make sure immigrants are not criminals, have a means to support themselves, and are free of infectious diseases. His wife immigrated to the United States legally, he noted....(more@link)