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IMPUNIDAD-IMPUNITY

I was raised far away from "government" in Venezuela. What that meant is that government employees, including law enforcement, could act with impunity because there was no one to report to and there was no one supervising. Growing up "impunidad" was a word you heard all the time, don't talk to the police because they can can act with "impunidad." Impunidad: Impunity- without consequence. Knowing that powerful people could behave with impunity meant that you always avoided them, in most places it is a great honor to have a powerful person in your home or place of business; where I grew up it made you walk on eggshells until they left.

When I moved to the U.S. nothing brought more relief than knowing you could trust those who worked for government. If they didn't do their job, there was someone to report to and there were consequences enough times that I didn't have to worry about that word following me around "impunity." You could call 911 and the police would show up, same with the firefighters; you could speak to the school  board about programs you didn't want to see cut. Every once in a while there would be a story in the papers about a police officer, a prosecutor and even a judge that was convicted for committing a crime, yes, I was finally in a place where powerful people were not allowed to act with impunity.

I did eventually learn that there were times where impunity could easily leak into our system, but by and large I still had a sense that when it happened, no one was proud of it. That was until I got access to evidence in criminal cases and later when video became widely available. You could see extra judicial killings occur time and time again with the common citizen defending them and the legal system excusing them. In some instances, police officers were so blatant in their actions, you started to see they had pride in impunity.

Impunity scared me. I wrote about impunity a lot. I would write about impunity in my political asylum cases. Yes, most of these clients didn't leave their countries because they were poor and downtrodden; they left their countries because impunity had permanently moved into their legal and political systems. As I saw impunity sneak in, I was scared that at any moment impunity would permanently move in and become part of the American fabric and that once again I would have to live with that word. IMPUNITY

There were forces fighting against impunity, of course,but you could see the tide changing. My political asylum briefs would often sound like what was happening in government across the United States, and one day, not surprisingly Trump pardons Arpaio. If you don't know Joe Arpaio, he was the Arizona Sheriff who, on-the-one-hand billed himself as being tough on crime, but on the other was constantly violating the law: from being involved in a human trafficking ring to housing prisoners in jails that violate DOJ standards to proudly racially profiling Latinos to proudly violating court orders to not racially profile Latinos. In spite of constantly flouting the law, he would also be re-elected. If there was someone in the U.S. who would epitomize impunity, it was Arpaio. Every time I saw his smirk, proud of being able to act with impunity, I knew it would only be a matter of time before impunity would become as American as it was Haitian as it was Ugandan as it was Venezuelan.

Fortunately, while he didn't experience consequences, there were some checks on his power, there were the courts, the voters and the activists. He lost his last bid for re-election and was ordered not to continue breaking the law. It seemed like impunity might still have to fight to become part of the fabric of the American experience. And there it was, on August 25, 2017 President Trump pardons Arpaio. IMPUNITY.

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