Editor’s Note: the Post’s editorial team does not endorse the use of the term “illegal” when referring to undocumented persons. This piece, however, is an opinion piece and all views held within it should be associated with its author.

As reported here on Tuesday, October 7, a grassroots organization saw fit to ask the Long Beach City Council to require the removal of a political cartoon currently displayed in State Senator Ricardo Lara’s Long Beach Field Office at 3939 Atlantic Ave., Suite 107.

The group is called “We the People Rising” and, despite the characterization in the original article, is not an “anti-immigration” group but, rather, an “anti-illegal immigration group.” Many consider this a distinction without a difference but it does not seem inappropriate to me to ask that people who enter our nation do so legally.

The group’s comments before the City Council can be seen here, commencing at time stamp 00:06:10. None of the three speakers representing the group asked the Council to “force Lara to take down the cartoon,” as the previous article reported. The Council has no such authority and the speakers appear to have understood that. One speaker asked the Council to join the group in “requesting” the cartoon be removed but this is a far different thing from asking that the Council “force” anyone to do anything.

Here’s the thing: like any other elected official, Sen. Lara has every right to display whatever sort of pictures he likes on his office walls. Also like any other elected official, Sen. Lara is rightly subject to scrutiny and critique for his choices in that regard. We the People Rising is within its rights to take exception and state, quite accurately, that elected officials should make efforts to represent all of their constituents in a fair and unbiased manner.

For his part, Sen. Lara has characterized the cartoon in question as satire; Lara is way off, however, in his generalizations about Arizona.

In the previous article, Lara is quoted referring to: “Arizona’s well-known, discriminatory, anti-immigrant and anti-Latino attitudes in recent history.”

This is patently false. Like We the People Rising, Arizona is neither “anti-immigrant” nor “anti-Latino.” According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Arizona’s legal population is currently 30% “Hispanic or Latino” (almost 13% percentage points above the national average) and, as of 2007, over 10% of its businesses were “Hispanic owned” (almost two percentage points above the national average at that time).

The cartoon Chris Britt drew and which Sen. Lara apparently found sufficient value in to display in his office is rather dated now. Britt apparently drew it four years ago, when Arizona was trying to enact legislation to help them deal with a massive influx of illegal immigrants in that state and the many public safety, health and finance challenges that influx created and/or exacerbated.

Much of the national news media blatantly mischaracterized what Arizona was attempting to accomplish and, as a result, cartoonists like Britt and politicians like Sen. Lara became angry and offended.

Through the law, all Arizona attempted to do was make it a misdemeanor crime in that state to be present without some form of documentation proving that a person was present in the country legally. To that end the law allowed state and local law enforcement personnel to ask for proof of legal status in the course of any other lawful stop or detention assuming the officer or deputy developed reasonable suspicion to believe the person might not be present legally.

That’s all.

The law did not magically transform Arizona’s police officers or deputies into German storm troopers or the state legislature into comic book versions of Kaisers as Mr. Britt chose to depict in his satirical cartoon. The law was not to any degree racist because a person’s race was not any part of the statute. It could be applied to any person not present in the country illegally, regardless of nation or origin.

In point of fact the majority of Arizona’s voters—many themselves Latino and Latina—approved of the law as written, even though the Supreme Court ultimately decided that several sections improperly encroached upon the federal government’s immigration enforcement authority. Since then and to this day, however, state and local Arizona law enforcers have detained many people suspected of being present illegally and delivered to ICE for further investigation and disposition.

Strangely, the world has not ended, the nation has not imploded, and the good people of Arizona are not living in a totalitarian Nazi state. All that has happened is that political cartoonists like Mr. Britt have moved on to other subjects and other misrepresentations of fact.

Sen. Lara has every right to display the cartoon in his office and the members of We the People Rising have every right to take exception and voice their displeasure.