On Friday evening, February 4, ABC News broadcasts its usual "What Would You Do" show, starring veteran newscaster John Quinones. The major feature was a manufactured scenario by ABC in a Tucson dining establishment during which a fake security guard would approach Hispanic-looking people and demand to see documentation to prove they were in the United States legally.
The segment was designed to call into question Arizona legislation signed into law last year by Governor Jan Brewer, a law mimicking federal law in that it requires people to provide proper identification to prove they are legally in the United States. Before the law was put into effect, it was amended to prohibit any law enforcement officer from solely stopping anyone to prove they are in the country legally. A person or persons must first be stopped on suspicion of some other law violation before an officer can question immigration status.
The ABC fake scenario was blatantly false on two fronts. In the first place, security guards cannot lawfully ask anyone to prove immigration status, and in the second place, the Arizona law specifically prohibits law enforcement officers from stopping someone solely to check immigration status.
Unfortunately, it appears that Quinones didn't read the law as it was amended, or he chose to ignore the amended version. What ABC did was a totally dishonest representation of the Arizona law, but look it this way, if Quinones loses his ABC gig, he can always join the Obama justice department. The attorney general, Eric Holder, didn't read the law either before he condemned it.
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