Gadsen Times - Republican Sen. Wes Kitchens ... said he didn’t intend SB 53 to reflect the language of that infamous antebellum law, which authorized kidnapping and threatened fines and imprisonment to those who helped enslaved people flee to freedom. Whatever Kitchens’ intent, though, it’s hard to miss the parallels, as Jerome Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center pointed out at a public hearing on that bill and other legislation targeting Alabama’s immigrant communities.
Section 7 of the Fugitive Slave Act made it a crime to “harbor or conceal such fugitive, so as to prevent the discovery and arrest of such person, after notice or knowledge of the fact that such person was a ‘fugitive from service or labor.’”
SB 53 as filed makes it a crime to conceal, harbor or shield “from detection an illegal alien if he or she knows or reasonably should have known that the other individual is an illegal alien.”
There are 175 years separating the proposed law from the notorious one, but they seem to share similar goals. Like making people flinch before extending their hands to a suffering human being. Making churches and nonprofits hesitate to the help someone — even a child — who lacks legal status.
Criminalizing compassion.
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