Worst of the Worst Update
Of license plate holders and perfume bottles.
Via NBC News: Indian immigrant fights deportation after police mistake perfume labeled ‘Opium’ for the narcotic.
An Indian immigrant who was working as a delivery driver was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after police officers in central Arkansas mistook a bottle of perfume labeled “Opium” as the narcotic drug of the same name.
Because, as it is well known, opium comes in a bottle (in liquid form, no less) with “Opium” on the label.
Good thing he didn’t have a Coke can in the car as well!
Raghu was arrested in May after an officer from the Benton Police Department spotted the rollerball perfume bottle in his car during a routine traffic stop. Raghu had been on an expired visa. He said he had tried to keep his status current by retaining an immigration lawyer to help before the expiration date, but the attorney, who no longer works with him, didn’t file the paperwork in time. He was sent to ICE detention after the arrest revealed his immigration status, his current attorneys said.
Raghu was released from ICE custody after nearly a month and all charges have since been dropped, but he was placed in deportation proceedings.
[…]
Roughly five months ago, Raghu, a delivery driver, had just finished an order when he was pulled over, he said. According to a police report, the officer initially stopped him because his license plate cover obscured the plate information, which is prohibited in Arkansas. The officer then asked Raghu for consent to search the car, the report said.
“I gave him consent because when you see a cop, you’re a little bit scared,” Raghu said. “Like, ‘Why are all these blue lights on me when I did nothing wrong?’”
After Raghu stepped out of the car, the officer came across the roller bottle, according to the police report. Raghu said that he generally keeps small bottles of perfume on his console to mask the scent of cigarette smoke. He said he bought the perfume at a gas station.
While I understand why it is illegal to have a license plate partially blocked, I am not a fan of pretextual stops like this. This was the police going fishing, not trying to deal with a suspected crime of any substance.
Raghu’s attorneys said that the arrest snowballed in part because of his immigration history. While Raghu entered the U.S. lawfully on a B-2 tourist visa in May 2024, the visa expired later that year, according to Javier Contreras, a Little Rock-based immigration attorney who was retained while Raghu was in detention. Raghu, who had been dating his now-wife Ashley Mays, remained in the country to pursue the relationship. The two got married in April.
Raghu said the failure of his previous attorney to file his visa application in a timely manner left him without status and at risk of being detained and deported.
Whenever I called them, their attitude was, ‘It’s OK, you are married to a born and raised citizen,’” Raghu said.
What this appears to be is over-aggressive policing, coupled with some pretty stupid (or malicious) actions in the field, leading to an intersection with our current politics, leading to ICE getting involved.
Should Raghu have made sure his paperwork was filed? Of course. It is also understandable that when you hire an attorney, you trust them to actually have the expertise they claim to have.
The whole story smacks of a broken system. How is anyone made safer now that he is not allowed to work and has to wait possibly years to get this situation resolved?
Contreras said that while Raghu previously would’ve been able to apply for immigration relief and work authorization all at the same time, his ongoing deportation proceedings mean that he cannot obtain a work permit until his pending family-based visa is approved. And this process could take up to years.
It would be my understanding that the deportation proceedings are a result of current federal policy, which has no room for mercy, compassion, or even a dispassionate assessment of harm.
Since many people apparently don’t care if someone who lacks a proper visa is mistreated, how about his wife, who is an American citizen (and is white, for those keeping score these days). What about her rights not to have her family disrupted in this way?
You would think it is not unreasonable for there to be a right to have one’s spouse be given permanent residency. But sure, let’s ruin a family’s ability to care for itself over a license plate cover, some perfume, and some paperwork.
There has to be a better way than this, and it is a national shame that we have been unwilling to fix this system, which is now being weaponized because people in power don’t like (most) foreigners.
I think it’s completely fair to no longer assume goodwill or truthfulness from all federal police, agency leadership, and political leadership.
If they want to break the unwritten rules, then they don’t benefit from the unwritten rules either.
Some problems are difficult. This is not one of them. The American government could have found a way to keep hard-working, caring people in the country legally. It’s not like turning our economy around to fight climate change or figuring out how to keep people from using opiates (the ones they smuggle in the packages which don’t read Opiates). It’s a problem with an easy resolution.
Republicans chose to embrace an unfathomable form of stupidity, and they did it because they love being stupid in the same way that they love having cops who think opium comes in perfume bottles.
Ann Telnaes shows the very worst they’re after
Based on the totality of circumstances known to anyone with a brain, that officer is one or more of the following:
-poorly trained in recognition of controlled substances;
-too stupid to be trained in such difficult subject matter;
-poor judgment in using their “training and experience”;
-malicious toward everyone;
-malicious toward non-white people.
All of those should be disqualifying for anyone entrusted with enforcing laws and carrying a firearm.
On one hand, I imagine a small percentage of officers have seen opium. Pills? Yes. Heroin? Yes. Plain ol’ opium? Probably not. It may be Arkansas, but the Wild West, it ain’t.
On the other, it should be obvious that anyone actually carrying opium around is unlikely to carry it around in a receptacle labeled opium.
If it was Laudanum, it may be labeled opium tincture. But it would be red. And it would be by prescription.
The fact that no one in the department even thought twice about how little sense it made based on “the totality of circumstances” to the point they sent it out to be tested calls into question the priorities of that police department. According to a Google AI summary, Benton has a higher than national average rate of both violent and property crimes. Though, the rate is lower than Arkansas as a whole.
@Kurtz: I got pulled over in Mississippi once in the 90’s. Arizona resident driving a rental car, I MUST be hauling meth. I got the full treatment. I had been eating some chocolate and some crumbs got on the seat. I will never forget 6 squad cars worth of cops carefully scooping up all my chocolate crumbs, chortling over “how they just found my meth, and I was going down”. I will not lie, I was an asshole. I laughed the whole time they were picking up my chocolate crumbs and telling them they would never recognize good meth if they saw it, if that’s what they thought it looked like. 😉
As I recall, I ended up with a speeding ticket. 5 miles over on their speed trap.
@Jax: That was a situation ripe for the cops to drop evidence into your car.
Municipal Police and County Sheriffs typically have very easy access to illegal drugs, a situation that also forces a lot of them to move to the police force in the next town over once they are caught.
@Tony W: Imagine how much worse it might’ve been today, particularly if my skin color had been anything but white.