Fresh off its embarrassing arrest of a Daimler-Benz employee under its harsh immigration law, law enforcement in Alabama have given the state's business community another big case of heartburn.
It seems the immigration dragnet swept up an employee of one of the other major auto manufacturers in Alabama.
A Japanese employee of Honda's huge assembly facility in Lincoln, which is east of Birmingham, was arrested in the town of Leeds.
The mayor of Leeds, Eric Patterson, defended the arrest:
Patterson said the Honda employee was ticketed for driving without a valid license and was arrested for being in violation of a section of Alabama's immigration law that requires everyone to have a valid license while driving.
City officials said he was released on a signature bond at the checkpoint and was not taken to jail. There was a magistrate at the checkpoint.
The immigration law amended another law on driving without a license to require officers to arrest a driver if police can't verify that the driver has been issued a valid license.
"The police are instructed to follow the law as written," Patterson said. "People are trying to use this to make the law look bad. That's not our problem. We're going to enforce the laws of state of Alabama."
Yep. that's what happens when the police carry out the law as written. Call it the Law of Unintended Consequences, as in "we meant for the police to arrest Mexicans, not German and Japanese business executives."
Of course, you can never be too careful about those sneaky Japanese. If you let them just run around the state, the next thing you know they'll be bombing Pearl Harbor.
So Alabama is now 2 for 2 in arresting employees of two of its biggest manufacturing employers.
Will the police in Montgomery make it a 3 for 3 sweep by hauling off an executive for Hyundai, the Korean auto manufacturer that operates a large plant in Montgomery?