Local News: From Simi Valley, CA to Riverside, NJ

Remember Simi Valley, California?  That is where a jury in 1992 acquited four Los Angeles Police Officers in the brutal (and videotaped) beating of African American Rodney King.  Well, the city made the news on the immigration front yesterday.  AP reports that activists on both sides of the illegal immigration debate faced off outside a church where an undocumented immigrant is being sheltered with her U.S.-born/citizen infant son. (This, of course, sounds similar to the case of Elvira Arrellano, who spent a lengthy time in a church sanctuary in chicago and was later deported when she left the church; her citizen son later rejoined Elvira in Mexico.).  One immigrant-rights advocate was injured with a chemical spray during Sunday’s confrontation at the United Church of Christ. Members of the restrictionist group Save Our State, which organized the rally that drew about 120 protesters and counter-protesters, said they had hoped to make a citizen’s arrest of the woman. The woman has been living in the church as part of the New Sanctuary Movement, which arranges church accommodations for undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

There is more upbeat immigration news from the East Coast, however.  In RIVERSIDE, N.J., a town ordinance intended to punish employers and landlords who hire or house illegal immigrants would be too expensive to defend, Riverside officials said in voting to rescind the year-old law. The ordinance had never been enforced, and Monday night’s 3-1 vote by the Riverside Township Committee put an end to it. Township officials said they couldn’t afford the legal bills that would come with defending the law in court.  Riverside’s decision evidently was affected by the district court’s invalidation of the Hazleton, PA immigration ordinance; plaintiffs in that case have sought several hundred thousand dollars in attorneys’ fees from Hazleton.

KJ