Protect, Serve, and Deport by Amada Armenta

Author:Amada Armenta
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520968868
Publisher: University of California Press.

THE ATTACK OF EL PROTECTOR

In 2006, debates over unauthorized immigrants’ driving privileges were in full swing (see chapter 2). Undocumented residents lost eligibility for driver’s licenses in 2004 and lost eligibility for driving certificates in 2006. In addition, a string of Hispanic businesses had been targeted for armed robberies that year, and the manager of a popular Mexican restaurant was beaten to death.15 Shortly thereafter, the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce announced that it was hosting an event to “discuss increasing criminal activity in our neighborhoods and the need for solutions and better avenues for communication.”16

The day before the public meeting, business owners wrote a public letter to the police chief, requesting that the department adopt a policy banning immigration-related inquiries. The police chief had already gone on record saying that officers would not enforce immigration laws. In 2004 he told the paper, “With great respect and deference to our federal partners, we are not the INS. As long as I am chief of the Nashville police department, I’m going to be steadfastly against police being INS agents. It’s just not our job.”17 Much to business owners’ disappointment, the chief declined to modify department policy, saying, “It would be improper for this department to implement a written policy that would preclude enforcement of any legislative act.”18

The meeting took place in a large banquet hall in Southeast Nashville, and more than one hundred people attended. While the chief did not attend, Officer Borges attended with a number of other police officials. Business owners hoped that the meeting would facilitate conversation and communication, but the meeting quickly became contentious. Apparently Officer Borges refused to speak Spanish, despite repeated requests from assembled business owners for translation.19 A fluent Spanish speaker, Borges said that navigating both languages was burdensome and unfair to English-speaking police officials at the meeting.

Esteban, who owns a number of Mexican grocery stores in Nashville, recalls that the meeting was acrimonious. He saw the comportment of department officials—from the chief’s lack of attendance to Borges’s refusal to speak Spanish—as a clear message that the department did not care about their concerns. “At the end, instead of having something positive, we left angrier, business owners against the police, police against business owners,” Esteban said.

The relationship between El Protector and Latino residents deteriorated further when Officer Borges threw his hat into the ring in local politics. That fall, Borges ran as the Republican candidate against a Democratic incumbent for state representative of District 60. Borges’s entire platform was his opposition to illegal immigration. He pledged to end driver’s licenses and state welfare benefits for unauthorized residents, even though they were eligible for neither. In addition, Officer Borges supported a city English-only language policy and advocated for allowing local police to enforce immigration laws. While his policy positions mirrored those of many Republicans running for state office in 2006, they were shocking when coming from the man who was charged with Hispanic community outreach.

Borges’s about-face did not go unnoticed. On November 5, 2006, Telemundo ran a story called “The Attack of El Protector.

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