Perhaps. In this case.
If you were an undocumented person in 2017 USA, how much faith would you have in the word of a Florida sheriff?
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Look the official policy in Texas was also not to worry about immigration status, because people who are putting things together have their priorities in order. (And right now ICE wouldn’t even have the means to do a proper job in the area.) Remember that the people who run HUMANITARIAN shelters are different than the people in the government. Especially in the case of private orgs like churches and the Red Cross and dozens of other orgs and religious groups.
In the case it is government run, FEMA has a different job than ICE, as do the city and state level organizations. It isn’t some masterful conspiracy, it’s all a hodgepodge of various laws and enforcement units, which is why we have so many illegal/undocumented people in the first place. It’s all a mixed bag of attitudes and enforcement. I would dare say the attitudes in Florida are considerably more pro-immigrants due to the large Cuban population. I remember in the 90s when people were protesting the Democrats sending BACK an illegal immigrant to Cuba. They did so with police with MP5s!
Certainly you can find government entities and leaders who are anti-immigrants, from the President to that sheriff in Arizona. But it isn’t a consistent stance by any means. Hell Obama actually INCREASED deportation of some people, but also tempered things with polices like DACA. Probably a decent measure to increase over all immigration, while enforcing some laws.
TL;DR
So while I appreciate the struggles of illegal immigrants, and think any one able and law abiding should have a path to citizenship, and I agree there are more forces currently against them than before, it isn’t by any measure a united effort. Most people are more than willing to put aside race, creed, religion, ethnicity, and other differences in times of crisis, a seen by the mountain of evidence of people helping one another in Texas.
Yes the world is shit, but not all the time.
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I still don’t get that. Are there that many people that are wanted by the police with an warrant on the run???
(Sorry I’m from germany and i only can compare to our system of justice)
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So how it was worded sort of matters. He stipulates a reason behind it with “We don’t want sex offenders in a shelter with potential victims”. By adding that it ensures most people will say “Ok, yeah…makes sense to me” Its a no truescotsman style argument.
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Yeah, its a very insidious way to get the majority of people to just shrug and say, “Seems like a perfectly fine policy to me!”
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Oh Florida! Why do you make the following image something that Americans may feel is necessary?
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Oh, Florida authorities:
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And that is the problem.
If a sex offender who had an outstanding warrant did show up at a shelter, any reasonable person wouldn’t want them to have unsupervised access to potential victims; but any reasonable person also wouldn’t want to deny them shelter in a deadly storm either.
If the person has a warrant out for car theft; well, we are certainly going to be less concerned they are stealing a car during a hurricane.
All of this takes rational thought…which is in very short supply currently.
FWIW: my opinion is if it were me, I’d have my LEOs focusing on securing and helping people find shelter and safety, not enforcing the law. But that probably makes me a bleeding heart liberal.
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Is the jail really secure against flooding though? I mean if you have the jail full up, and it starts flooding, then you have to move people to keep them from dying but it’s really difficult because you’ve managed somehow to overfill your jail!
I’m just saying Florida Sheriff may be less bright than Florida Man.
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Well, whatever his intent is, the effect he should know will happen is to intimidate people already afraid of the law (aka “the moocher class”) into not seeking help when they need it. Only a handful of people have outstanding warrants for sex offenses or otherwise, but lots of people are afraid they might have an outstanding warrant that they don’t know about.
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"We cannot and we will not have innocent children in a shelter with sexual offenders & predators,” is bogus or misplaced rationale.
Sexual offenders and predators can be anywhere; why use shelters as an excuse. Are Floridian cops checking people for warrants at every gathering place whatever the place or weather condition?
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I can see doing warrant checks, if you want to be a right-wing jerkoff. (Hey, some people do.) But why would you announce you’re going to do that? It ruins both the rescue effort and the warrant checks.
It appears the guy is just pumping up his right-wing jerkoff creds, to prepare for the next election. In his defense, he’s going to be judged by Florida voters, who are notorious right-wing jerkoffs.
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Yeah, this is one of those passive-aggressive ways of saying, “if you leave the state, we don’t mind. If you die in the storm, we don’t mind. Just don’t bother the 1st class citizens.”
It sounds a lot like the way southern law enforcement treated people of color for decades. “Move along, we don’t want your kind in this county…”
Or the Dude in Malibu: "STAY OUT OF MALIBU, DEADBEAT! Keep your ugly fucking goldbricking ass out of my beach community! "
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I work in a county jail in Florida. From my understanding sex offenders should check with their probation office for where to check in. We can’t take them unless they have a warrant. I got calls yesterday asking if we could take sex offenders for IRMA. He should have just said if you are a sex offender where to turn yourself in instead of intimidating people with traffic violations.
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What about all the sexual predators given access to the shelter who haven’t been identified/arrested/convicted?. This could give people a false sense of security about being in one of the shelters.
So somebody with a warrant turns themselves in to the jail which is a safe shelter from the weather. What about the danger of being locked up with a bunch of potentially violent people in that jail? What about losing your job when you stay locked up after the storm? What about your family that doesn’t get sheltered from the storm because you’re afraid of what happens when you go to a shelter?
Pretty much whichever way you look at this comes out with Sheriff Grady looking like a douchbag.
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This is a trick question, right? No one should trust the word of any US cop and any halfway competent lawyer will tell you as much. US cops are trained to lie.
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As Jesus said, in The 21st Century Evangelical Bible, “That which you do to the least of them is none of my business as long as you keep donating to your megachurch. The Poors aren’t tithing, so fuck 'em. Your pastor needs a new Learjet. In remembrance of Me.”
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