In 1999, I started the immigration time-out organization, ProjectUSA, which put up billboards advertising facts about US immigration policy and its impact on the United States. Although we put up billboards in almost every region of the country, most of our “billboard democracy” activism took place in New York City—mainly because that is where I lived.

Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York then, and I gained a front row perspective on where the man stands on the deeply important issue of immigration. That is, I gained a perspective of where he stands while he is serving in office—not running for it.

1. Giuliani administration actively fought ProjectUSA’s efforts

In 1999, it was absolutely taboo to question US immigration policy. The taboo was so strong that the mere mention of the word in anything but reverential tones could cause people to gasp. Audibly.

It seemed to me back then that, given how far-reaching, unpredictable, and permanent the impact of immigration is, a taboo against even debating the policy is reckless in the extreme and certainly unworthy of a mature democracy.

Hoping to help puncture the taboo, I started ProjectUSA. From the outset, my stated goal was to drag the immigration issue into the center of public debate where it belonged. We would accomplish this best, I decided, by advertising straight facts about immigration in broad daylight on bright red billboards stuck right in the middle of the public square .

In New York City, the reaction to this effort was truly amazing. Politicians held demonstrations in front of our billboards. Ethnic-identity agitators threatened violence against me and members of my family. New York State Senator Dov Hikind wrote an opinion piece attacking “the putrid stench of the kind of racism that Craig Nelson (sic) embraces.” One editorialist after another attacked me as a hate-monger, and the Washington Post dubbed me loser of the week for encouraging “ethnic hatred…in such diverse cities as New York.” Local rabbis warned of the “dark clouds of fascism” our boards betokened. My congressman, Rep. Joe Crowley, condemned our boards’ “loathsome messages” (which were derived from statistics we got from such well-known hate groups as the Census Bureau). The New York City Council voted 43-2 to denounce ProjectUSA, and, at the press conference after, I was compared to a self-described neo-nazi, who, a few days earlier at a Jewish pre-school in Los Angeles, had shot some children to death.

On at least two occasions, Mayor Giuliani was asked by callers to his weekly radio show to weigh in on the controversy swirling around our boards.

Did Rudy Giuliani defend ProjectUSA’s right to communicate vital information to voters about an important public policy? Did he stick up for my right to participate vigorously in our democracy?

Far from it.

The Giuliani administration piled on. The NYC Department of Buildings used threats of selective enforcement and other bullying tactics against billboard companies we’d contracted with to force down ProjectUSA’s billboards before the contracts expired.

2. New York City was so a sanctuary city under Giuliani

One of the death threats I received by telephone during our billboard campaign was detailed enough that I went to my local police precinct to file a report in case something came of it. When the officers behind the desk realized who I was, word seemed to spread; by the time I finished filling out the paperwork, a small group of officers had gathered.

The cops told me horror stories of an immigration policy run amok. Their hands were tied, they told me, regarding illegal immigrants. They described the department’s de facto sanctuary policy, which made the procedure for notifying federal immigration authorities of illegal aliens in custody so difficult as to be an effective deterrent.

The cops seemed anxious, in that understated cop way, that it be understood that they were willing to enforce the laws—all the laws.

Afterwards, as I was backing out of my parking space, an officer came up and knocked on the window. I lowered it (the first time in my life where it didn’t cost me money). Listen, we couldn’t say anything in there, the cop said, nodding towards the police station, but we want you to know we have your back.

3. NYC flouts Supreme Court decision, tells Congress otherwise

A few years later, I attended a congressional hearing in Washington, DC on New York City’s sanctuary policy. The hearing was held in the wake of a brutal crime that had occurred not too far from the police station where I reported the death threat.

Five men had attacked a couple in a park, knocked the man unconscious, and dragged the woman to a shantytown area where they gang-raped her in an ordeal that didn’t end until local cops, probably saving her life, were able to rescue her. Four of the five men arrested at the scene were illegal aliens; three of those four had previously been in NYPD custody—one of them for a violent crime against a woman.

The congressional subcommittee wanted New York City officials to explain why the three illegal aliens in NYPD custody were released instead of turned over to federal authorities for deportation. Was it city policy, in direct violation of explicit federal law, not to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement?

The Giuliani administration, after all, had fought the federal law all the way to the Supreme Court in order to protect the city’s sanctuary policy, and lost. Was New York City flouting the Supreme Court’s decision? If so, did the Giuliani administration’s refusal to abide by federal immigration law contribute to the horror that that woman endured in a NYC park?

During his congressional testimony, John Feinblatt, the Criminal Justice Coordinator for New York City, by this time under a new mayor, denied the city had a sanctuary policy in place. He blamed unresponsive federal authorities for the lack of cooperation between city and federal law enforcement.

As I listened to John Feinblatt betray them, I thought of the cops in my local precinct and their frustration at the soft but effective resistance to immigration law enforcement they had faced under the Giuliani administration. I thought of the woman in the park who had paid the price.

Now Mayor Giuliani wants to be President Giuliani.

Frankly, I’d rather vote for the cop who came out and knocked on my window. We need a president who has our backs—not Mexico’s, China’s, or Korea’s backs, not Europe’s, not Israel’s, and not Iraq’s, not Wal-Mart’s, not Enron’s, not Goldman-Sachs’, not the RNC’s, the DNC’s, not any PAC’s, just ours.

Tags:   Giuliani · immigration · New York City · ProjectUSA · sanctuary city3 Comments