It hardly bears repeating (but I will) that the worst thing you can possibly be in a Republican primary is soft on immigration. So then, what do you do when you’re seeking that party’s approval to run a state where one in five residents is foreign born, in other words, an immigrant? Well, if you’re a newb, like the two I wrote about last time, you go hard on the anti-immigrant rhetoric, cross your fingers and all your toes, and hope that appealing to your base’s worst instincts carries you through to the nomination. Never mind that that kind of talk in a land so heavily reliant on immigrant skill and labor will almost certainly sink you in the general election. 

A savvier political player, on the other hand ... well, that one knows how to tread the line, walking right up to it and then stepping back slowly, all in the spirit of plausible deniability; knowing full well that their words can and will come back to haunt them. 

Take Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, one of our 2022 Republican candidates for Governor of Nevada. This man knows how to play the game; his lack of transparency so finely attuned to this topic that it’s almost laudable, if only it weren’t so dangerous. In writing about the other candidates, the thing that struck me was the hypocrisy with which they could so easily switch from pretending to advocate for immigrants to demonizing them in the pursuit of political points. Lombardo didn’t fit that description because, from my perspective, I've always known him to be pretty openly an enemy of the immigrant community, collaborating with ICE whenever possible to hand over as many vulnerable immigrants as he could and to keep that deportation machine going. I also knew him to be a liar. 

Back in 2019, following a federal court’s decision on the legality of the 287(g) program (which essentially made ICE agents out of law enforcement officers) and facing potential lawsuits if it continued in Las Vegas, Lombardo shut the program down and made a big public showing of it. At a Hispanics in Politics event that I was present for, we were assured by the sheriff himself that Metro was committed to building trust within the immigrant community, that 287(g) was a thing of the past. But a rose by any other name... 

Those of us working with detainees, getting the phone calls from jails or from desperate family members, knew immediately that very little had changed. People were still ending up in ICE custody after being pulled over for traffic violations or unpaid parking tickets, posting bail on soon-to-be-dropped criminal charges only to find ICE officers waiting for them as soon as they set foot outside the jail. Since Metro was no longer tipping ICE agents off, as they repeatedly assured us, surely what we were witnessing were the superior investigative, even instinctual, capabilities of a highly skilled agency to sniff out them shady immigrants no matter where they were hiding. A kind of undocudar, if you will. Either that or, you know, <gasp> Lombardo was lying to us.  Of course, we couldn’t prove any of this at the time, having instead to rely on anecdotal evidence because well... you try getting records of wrongdoing from Metro. Of course, that can only work for so long and we were recently vindicated when the Review Journal reported in November what us immigration attorneys had known all along: the cops lied. More importantly, the top cop lied. Repeatedly. And now that dude wants to be your Governor.  

Putting aside the absence of ethics, the total lack of respect to a public he supposedly serves and is tasked with protecting, what happened to building community ties, my man? While most immigrants are not undocumented and thus not in immediate danger of being detained or deported based on their status, over a quarter of a million Nevadans live with at least one undocumented family member. How comfortable do you think they are calling the cops if, say, they witness their neighbor’s house being broken into?  Nope, they’re not inviting the police into their lives when ICE may follow right behind. The neighbors will just have to live without their TV ‘cuz I’m not living without my grandma. What if your U.S. citizen dad beats you and your undocumented mom? Call the police and your dad might spend a night or two in jail – maybe – but is that worth the risk of losing your mom, potentially forever? The fact that one would even have to make that calculation speaks to the gravity of the public safety issues that arise when police partner with agencies whose sole purpose is to target and terrorize immigrants.   When a whole subset of a community, a huge one at that, can’t count on its supposed “protectors,” then why keep pretending that that’s what they are? And all of this happened under Lombardo’s watch, nay, at his direction. Which means he ain’t even good at the job he’s got. But sure, let’s give him a promotion. 

The more I read though, the more I follow the shenanigans of this campaign season, the more I am left wondering whether what is to me clear proof of Lombardo’s antipathy towards immigrants is actually that obvious to anyone outside my very specific circles. Again, this man knows how to play politics and how to tailor his words to what his audience wants or needs to hear. How else do you explain his continuing to assure more immigrant friendly audiences, such as the NAACP and Hispanics in Politics, that he and his department care about building bridges, while also boasting to a group of Republicans that he has had a hand in deporting thousands of immigrants? Pretty weird flex to brag about separating 10,000 Nevadan families, but hey, he knows his people better than me, I guess. More importantly, how do you reconcile those two positions? 

The fact is, you can’t, but that’s really not the goal here, is it? No, the goal at this stage of the season, I’m starting to understand, is to give people just enough to project onto you what they already believe, what they want you to stand for. What you actually stand for, we may never know. The one thing I at least am sure of is that this man cannot be trusted. 

Martha E. Menendez lives in Nevada and is the legal manager for Justice in Motion, a NY-based organization.