Everyone knows the law is an ass. So I’m not sure why they feel the need to prove it over and over again:

All of her life, Zoila Meyer believed she was an American. She even won election to the City Council of Adelanto.

But now she is facing a threat of deportation for illegally voting, because she never became a citizen after being brought to this country from Cuba when she was 1 year old.

“To be honest with you, I’m scared. How can they just pluck me out of my family, my kids?” the 40-year-old mother of four said in a telephone interview Friday.

“If they can do this to me, they can do it to anybody,” she said.

After Meyer was elected to the council in Adelanto in 2004, someone told officials that she was born in Cuba, prompting an investigation.

Eventually, “the police came to me and said, ‘Zoila, you’re not a citizen. You’re a legal resident but you’re not a citizen,’” said Meyer, who now lives in the San Bernardino County desert town of Apple Valley, near Adelanto.

She resigned after 10 weeks in office in Adelanto, a town of about 23,000.
[...]
However, because she was not a citizen, Meyer faced a felony charge of illegally voting in the 2004 election.

In April 2006, she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting and was placed on probation, fined and ordered to pay restitution.

What Meyer didn’t realize is that fraudulently voting is a deportable offense.

On June 18, Meyer said, immigration officials showed up at her home and told her to appear at their San Bernardino office.

Her husband drove her to the office on Tuesday, “and they handcuffed me,” Meyer said. “They put me in jail and they frisked me and processed me.”

“I said ‘You’re doing this because I voted?”‘

The case is unusual but immigration officials were just doing their job when they arrested Meyer, said Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Funny how this business of enforcing the law works.

If it’s Zoila Meyer, there’s no prosecutorial discretion. The full force of the American government comes crashing on her head. And everybody puts on their best automaton voice, and goes: “Just doing our job, ma’am! Wouldn’t be America if we didn’t! Gotta handcuff you too. Says so right here in subsection 3a. Lose my job if I didn’t.”

But if you’re Dick Cheney willfully disobeying an executive order, suddenly doing your job means looking the other way. Studiously and steadfastly. What comes out now is a very different voice, all brown-nosing obsequiousness: “Ah yes, sorry sir! You can do whatever you want. The law doesn’t apply to you if you don’t want it to. In fact, it says so right here that law and order don’t apply to you, sir, right here in this non-existent subsection on page 18.* Sorry for the inconvenience, sir! Don’t worry, we’ll never apply the law to you. Lose my job if I did. And don’t you worry, sir. If we get any complaints, we know what to do, we know what to say. We’ll just say we’re investigating, sir, and we’ll do nothing, of course. Nothing’s the best policy all round.

No doubt Zoila Meyer is shell-shocked and pissed off right now. But she’ll be thanking her lucky stars when rational thought returns to her. Because the worst she’s facing is this:

Meyer was released pending a July 18 appearance before an immigration judge who will determine whether she will be deported to Canada, the last point of entry into the U.S. recorded in her immigration record.

Imagine if her last trip had been to Syria or Iran. Imagine what those automaton voices would be reciting then: “We’re sorry, ma’am, really very sorry. But we can’t return you to a country where you might be subjected to torture. We can’t let you stay in the U.S., the law’s very clear on that, and we can’t deport you to the last point of entry, the law’s very clear on that. And we have only one place really for people who can’t be allowed to stay in the U.S., should not be held in custody, but can’t be deported back to where they came from. Sorry, ma’am, it’ll have to be Guantanamo.”

* How many lies will it take till they know, that too many lies have been told? We’re talking sheer fabrications here, flat out just making things up. Perino has done it over and over again. And the White House is obviously okay with it. Absurd. There’s no accountability even for lower level repeat transgressors in this administration? (Note: this footnote was added at 6:10 am)