The Chicago Sun-Times article on the Barack Obama Administration's suit against Arizona.

I’m not much into writing about national politics. I’ve only touched upon immigration enforcement by local officials when McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren joined other suburban sheriffs in agreeing to do so.

(See April 14, 2010 article entitled,

“Nygren to Join Other Sheriffs in Arresting Aliens.”

Strangely, I didn’t see anything about that in the local Heralds or the edition of the Chicago Tribune delivered locally.)

A friend of McHenry County Blog send me this insightful column from the Boston Herald by Michael Graham:

Bad posture on amnesty
Funny how feds lean on Ariz., not R.I.

As you can see from the beginning of his piece, Graham comes at the subject from the point of view of enforcing immigration law:

“Attorney General Eric Holder finally filed that long-rumored lawsuit challenging Arizona’s new immigration law. In his opinion, only the federal government has the legal authority to ‘enforce’ (read ‘completely ignore’) border security. If the Obama administration were convinced that Arizona would treat illegal immigration the same way the feds do, they wouldn’t have bothered to sue.”

But what is interesting is not his viewpoint or extremely clever use of the English language. It’s his sharing what the State of Rhode Island police do that is, oh, so similar to what critics of the Arizona law fear.

Micheal Graham wrote this colum for the Boston Herald the day after the Feds announced their suit against Arizona's immigrant enforcement law.

In looking for just the right sentences to quote, I am reading through pungent criticism of President Barack Obama. I encourage you to read the whole column.

Later, he asks the trenchant question:

“Why pick on Arizona?…why isn’t he suing Providence instead of Phoenix? They’ve been doing local immigration enforcement for years now.”

Columnist Graham next cites rival paper Boston Globe and Democrat in explaining how the situation in Rhode Island resembles that feared in Arizona:

“As The Boston Globe-Democrat reported yesterday,

This is where Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees spend their time in the McHenry Jail when they are not in their cells.

‘From Woonsocket to Westerly, the troopers patrolling the nation’s smallest state are reporting all illegal immigrants they encounter, even on routine stops such as speeding, to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.’

“Even liberal Providence, where politicians long opposed any local enforcement efforts, changed its policy in 2008 after the infamous Marco Riz case.

“Riz was the illegal immigrant arrested by Providence cops twice while under a federal deportation order but released both times. He was then charged with carjacking a woman in Warwick and raping her in Providence.

“Rhode Island cops now routinely contact ICE when they suspect they’ve come across an illegal immigrant. Since 2006, the number of contacts they’ve made to ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center in Vermont has nearly doubled, the Globe reported. How is this significantly different than Arizona’s proposed law?”

Good question, wouldn’t you agree?