McCain: Illegal immigrants are “intentionally causing accidents on the freeway”

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

David Safier touched on this briefly here At what point do you say McCain has lost it?

Crooksandliars.com goes into more detail. "Small Government" McCain slams federal government while blaming immigrants for staged accidents:

John McCain is really scrambling this time around, it seems. In this segment on BillO's show, he hammers on the Federal government for not acting rapidly enough to 'secure the borders' while defending Arizona's new Xenophobia Act requiring all immigrants to keep their documents with them for examination at any time by law enforcement. Not content to stop there, he also blames immigrants for engaging in the 'intentional accident' scams.

O'REILLY: Now, next week, the governor is going to sign, we believe, a very stringent state law that gives the police in Arizona very, very broad authority to question people. And a lot of people say it's going to be racial profiling. You're going to look for Hispanics, question them, to see if they're here legally or not. And it's just not fair. And you say why?

MCCAIN: I say that the federal responsibilities have not been fulfilled. Therefore, the states are acting — the state of Arizona is acting and doing what they feel they need to do in light of the fact that the federal government is not fulfilling its fundamental responsibility to secure our borders. Our borders must be secure.

O'REILLY: But what about the racial profiling? You know that's going to happen has to happen.

MCCAIN: I hope — I would be very sorry that if some of that happens. And I regret it, but I also regret the — really, it's not just the murder of Robert Krantz. It's the people whose homes and property are being violated. It's the drive-by that — the drivers of cars with illegals in it that are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway. Look, our border is not secured. Our citizens are not safe.

Leaving aside the usual double-talk about the Feds from a "small-government" kind of guy, let's take a minute to think about those staged accidents. Here's how they work, usually in heavy traffic:

• The guy in front of you slams his brakes on after being cut off on the freeway.
• You slam your brakes on to avoid him, but you can't quite stop fast enough, so your car rear-ends his. Because these accidents are usually staged in heavy traffic, speed at impact tends to be low, but not low enough.
• The driver you hit has some passengers, and they all claim to have neck pain.
• You have to file a police report and an insurance claim, they run up medical bills with clinics involved in the scam, and they wait for the insurance settlement to close the deal

I have not yet seen a clarification from McCain's office, but in all fairness, he may have been referring to a series of shootouts and attempted "coyote" hijackings of human traffickers on the freeways of Phoenix over the years, some of which resulted in vehicle crashes and persons being shot. This was a problem that peaked early in the last decade before ICE formed task force "Operation ICE Storm" to deal with the problem in November 2003. DHS: Department of Homeland Security Launches Operation "ICE Storm" This was a year before McCain ran for reelction the last time, in 2004.

According to the East Valley Tribune in December 2007, "Rival gangs of human smugglers no longer battle for supremacy on busy freeways. The fight has come to quiet residential streets." East Valley Tribune: 'Coyote' wars move to Valley "[A]fter successful interdiction efforts on Arizona's highways, police and prosecutors say they now are seeing more crimes committed in the Valley." There are, however,occasional incidents on our freeways.

The Rodney Glassman campaign issued this response to McCain's statement:

Response to McCain Comments About "Illegals" Intentionally Causing Freeway Accidents

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Arizona candidate for U.S. Senate, Rodney Glassman, issued the following response to comments made on The O'Reilly Factor by Sen. John McCain when asked about racial profiling:

"I've been talking with people across Arizona who sit on both sides of the debate, and John McCain is the first person I've heard suggest such an epidemic, " said U.S. Senate candidate Rodney Glassman. "This kind of over-the-top rhetoric does nothing to bring the two sides together to hammer out common sense ways to enforce our laws and save lives."

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