A Nashville law enforcement officer who is often criticized for his heavy-handed tactics against undocumented immigrants recently addressed a gathering of white supremacists in his home state. Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall spoke at the Middle Tennessee chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white nationalist hate group that describes blacks as a "retrograde species of humanity" and "genetically inferior."
And guess what? Hall claims he didn't know that they were racists. From the Southern Poverty Law Center: Karla Weikal, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said the Middle Tennessee CCC asked Hall to talk to the group about his immigration enforcement program. She said Hall often speaks to private groups about issues related to the sheriff’s office and was not aware of the CCC’s racist beliefs... (Yeah, right.) But critics of the sheriff’s handling of immigration enforcement said Hall should have known better. "I am shocked that he would appear before such a group," said Nashville immigration lawyer Elliott Ozment... Fellow Nashville immigration attorney Mario Ramos agreed. "For Sheriff Hall to be speaking in front of a hate group shows a severe lack of judgment," he said. "I think the citizens of Nashville will be outraged that he spoke before this kind of group."
In 2007 Davidson County began participating in 287G, a program that gives local agencies the authority to enforce federal immigration law. Hall took to that like a possum on a crapper, saying it would help him go after undocumented immigrants who are "dangerous offenders." But that was just Hall's hot air. Of the nearly 3,000 people arrested during the program’s first year, half were nabbed for minor traffic violations such as driving without a license, according to an analysis conducted by The Tennessean.
So what kind of a gung-ho badass is this guy? Last July a pregnant Mexican woman was arrested by the Sheriff's department and charged with careless driving. Juana Villegas gave birth to her child while chained to the hospital bed. From the New York Times: By the time Mrs. Villegas was released from the county jail six days later, she had gone through labor with a sheriff’s officer standing guard in her hospital room, where one of her feet was cuffed to the bed... County officers barred her from seeing or speaking with her husband. After she was discharged from the hospital, Mrs. Villegas was separated from her nursing infant for two days and barred from taking a breast pump into the jail.
What a stellar example of law enforcement. It's not surprising that Sheriff Hall has a soft spot for white supremacists. I wonder if there are other hate groups beside CCC to whom he offers words of encouragement.
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