Arizona Police Officer Pushing Back Against Immigration Law
SANCHEZ: Welcomes back. I'm Rick Sanchez. I want to bring you up to date now on a story that's really got a lot of folks scratching their heads. I mean, on both sides. If you look at this story, you look at this situation that's going on right now in Arizona, it's making a lot of police officers in particular do things that to them is uncomfortable. Take, for example, the story we're about to share with you. This is the police officer who lives in a community where most of the people who live around him are Hispanic, immigrants. He goes to church with them, lives with them, knows them. Many of them are even illegal immigrants. He says that this law is not going to make him trusted. The word he uses is bad guy, as opposed to good guy. Listen to him as he takes you through his thought process. Our reporter is Thelma Gutierrez.</s>OFC. MARTIN ESCOBAR, TUCSON POLICE: I have to do my job. I have to serve and protect.</s>THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's not often a police officer speaks out publicly against the laws he's sworn to uphold. But Officer Martin Escobar, a naturalized citizen and a 15- year veteran of the Tucson Police Department, says he can no longer remain silent. We met to talk about the new Arizona law that Escobar calls unconstitutional. And as a police officer, he says he doesn't want to have to enforce it. As a private citizen, he's challenging it in federal court.</s>ESCOBAR: I said, OK, you know what? It's got to be done. It's the right thing for me to do. And sometimes you've got to stand up for what you believe.</s>GUTIERREZ: Officer Escobar took us to the area he patrols on Tucson's south side. It's where he grew up. (on camera): What is this neighborhood like?</s>ESCOBAR: This is a predominantly Hispanic community, predominantly Mexican community here.</s>GUTIERREZ: Lots of new immigrants.</s>ESCOBAR: Lots of new immigrants coming through here. A lot of people that don't know how to speak English.</s>GUTIERREZ (voice-over): He says he and other officers work hard to gain trust in their communities. It's how crime gets solved.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want to stay here by myself because I have no family here.</s>GUTIERREZ: But now even the children are running scared he will deport them. (on camera): So they're afraid of you?</s>ESCOBAR: Of course. Of course. I don't want them to be afraid of me. Officers, police officers are supposed to be the good guys. We're not the bad guys.</s>GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Under the law, Escobar would have to investigate the immigration status of anyone he stopped, detained or arrested if he suspected they were in the country illegally. (on camera): Under this law, you can be sued if you don't investigate?</s>ESCOBAR: Yes, that's correct.</s>GUTIERREZ: Does that worry you?</s>ESCOBAR: Yes, of course it does.</s>GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Within a week of passing the new law, Arizona lawmakers amended it, tightening provisions that critics claimed would lead to racial profiling. The state's governor says racial profiling will not be tolerated in Arizona. But Escobar knows how things work on the streets. (on camera): Are you saying that in Arizona, if you come upon a person with an Irish accent and a person with a Spanish accent, you'll investigate the person with the Spanish accent?</s>ESCOBAR: It's most likely that person with the Spanish accent is going to get investigated.</s>GUTIERREZ (voice-over): It's that assumption that bothers him most. (on camera): It sounds like you can relate to what some of the people are feeling right now.</s>ESCOBAR: Well, and that's exactly what I'm saying. And if you having (ph) that's why some people are not going to understand what the feeling is unless they've been through it. I've been through it. And that's a school picture when I'm in elementary school. I didn't have one -- one word of English. I remember then, at that time, being called a wetback, you know? That used to sting so bad.</s>GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Officer Escobar remembers being questioned by border patrol agents as a child. And he says he knows exactly what some of these children are feeling. He argues in his lawsuit that determining who is in Arizona illegally should not be his responsibility. He says under federal law, that job is reserved for trained federal immigration agents. Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Tucson, Arizona.</s>SANCHEZ: And just when things in Arizona could not get any crazier, they are not. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has just announced that he will not be running for governor of Arizona. Not be running for governor of Arizona. We have been following this for you throughout the day. That's the news, as we understand it, but I believe that he will make a statement which should be coming up in the next 25 minutes or so. When it does, whether it's on our watch, here on RICK'S LIST, or on "THE SITUATION ROOM" with Wolf Blitzer, you will see it live. Now to one of our premiere lists. Last hour I counted down a list of states with the most illegal immigrants, all the way from 10 to six. It came from statemaster.com. Now I want to bring you the top five. Here we go. Number five: Florida. -- 337,000 illegal immigrants said to live in Florida. Number four: Illinois -- 432,000 illegal immigrants live in Illinois. Number three: New York, with 489,000 illegal immigrants living there. Number two: Texas, 1,041,000 illegal immigrants live in Texas. But number one, as you can see right there is California, 2,209,000 illegal immigrants living in the state of California.</s>SANCHEZ: When you think of a volcano, you think of, like, Hawaii and long words (ph) like that. You don't think of Iceland. You think it's too cold to have a volcano there.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I guess that's why they're the most trusted name in news.</s>SANCHEZ: Stop that, Mr. President. I was kidding. I've done segments on this. Here's the president of the United States, owned the room at White House Correspondents' Dinner, and he's making fun of me. And if that isn't bad enough, he also makes fun of my colleague, Wolf Blitzer. Nobody puts homey in a corner. OK? We'll be right back. I'm defending Wolf Blitzer? We'll be right back with RICK'S LIST.