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The immigration-status checks SB 1070 requires are not always as simple as a request for information sent over the radio.

More and more, police officers are surrounded by activists, many of them holding video recorders and asking a long list of questions.

Frustrated with immigration reform stalled in Congress and increased cooperation between local police and the Border Patrol, immigrant-rights activists have escalated their civil-disobedience campaign. Over the past year, routine news conferences gave way to people lying in the street before the wheels of a Border Patrol vehicle.

On Oct. 8, the campaign intensified when more than 100 activists encircled a Border Patrol vehicle holding a driver and passenger Tucson police had stopped because of an improperly lighted license plate. The protest lasted more than an hour, required the deployment of two dozen police and Border Patrol agents, and ended only after a barrage of pepper spray.

Law-enforcement officials, increasingly wary of drawing a crowd, are shifting their tactics, too. Instead of the Border Patrol showing up at the site of a traffic stop, an agent might ask police to meet at a neutral location. Agents might also show up at a traffic stop disguised in plain clothes and an unmarked car.

Some officers are taking people they have detained directly to the Border Patrols gated campus on South Swan Road. Others are booking people into jail if its an option. The jail staff checks the immigration status of everyone booked.

One month after the October protest, Tucson police stopped Alberto Garca, a 31-year-old day laborer from Guatemala, because a records check showed a mandatory insurance suspension on the vehicle he was driving. When the officer asked for proof of who he was, Garca, who had no drivers license, showed the officer an ID issued by Southside Presbyterian Church.

Garcas lack of state-issued ID and difficulty speaking English prompted the officer to call the Border Patrol to identify him, said Sgt. Chris Widmer, a Tucson Police Department spokesman.

But before a border agent arrived, a group of eight to 10 activists with a video camera arrived, knocking on the officers window and asking why Garca was being arrested, the police report said. Fearing a repeat of the October protest, he drove away with Garca in handcuffs, inviting the agent to follow him.

The officer and agent drove to the west-side substation, where they passed through a gate that kept activists from following. The agent confirmed Garcas unauthorized status, and police decided to book him into jail for the crime of driving without a license, a violation for which people are usually cited and released.

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SB 1070 frustrations at a boil for protesters, police