The latest casualty in the war against illegal immigration is not the Highland Park girls basketball team, it's -- drumroll please -- reason. You know: the sense that God gave a goose.

How else to explain the flat-out immigration madness sweeping this great nation?

Take the Highland Park High School decision to pull out of the Holiday Invitational girls tournament in Scottsdale, Ariz., in December, which they happily committed to back in March before Gov. Jan Brewer decided to sign the infamous SB 1070 bill. That's the law that critics say legalizes racial profiling against Latinos based on vague gut reactions as to who might or might not be an illegal immigrant.

School District 113 decided to pull out for so-called safety reasons, but Assistant Supt. Suzan Hebson threw in that the trip "would not be aligned with our beliefs and values" because of the recent Arizona legislation.

OK, how tacky was it to let the Arizona organizers of this school-sponsored event, who had nothing to do with this state law, find out about the rebuke via the Thursday morning news? Very.

But not nearly as tacky -- scratch that, make it senseless and borderline cruel -- as using the hopes and aspirations of a team of plucky young basketball-playing, cookie-selling schoolgirls who actually won their first conference title in 26 years to make a national political statement.

A national political statement that, by the way, lit a fire under Caribou Killer Barbie Sarah Palin and gave the rest of the hysterical Mexican haters who pose as strict defenders of immigration laws a unique opportunity to actually be 100 percent right about something.

This e-mail message from one such constant complainer -- who proudly begs for "CINCO-DE-PORTATION!" -- hit my inbox first thing Thursday morning: "You probably heard by now . . . Well i [sic] myself thinks [sic] this is totally wrong, and has broken these girls [sic] hearts. They played their hearts out to win and qualify for the tourney. They worked so very hard, with bake sales, car washs [sic] etc. to earn the money to finance the trip also. Only to have the politicly [sic] correct liberal idiot administrators say they can't go. If you would, please email the school's administrator and tell them they are WRONG."

When you're right, you're right, buddy -- and congrats on the coup.

Just as Arizona has blurred the line between what's under the purview of federal law and state law, so has Highland Park High School blurred the line between politics and educational experiences. Sadly, they won't be the last.

The backlash against Arizona has become a national movement. Local governments across the country are suspending travel to the state and banning future contracts with businesses headquartered there, and masses of people are in some way or another boycotting the state in hope of getting the law repealed.

Now that Brewer has signed yet another bad bill into law -- this one aimed at ensuring that no Arizona schoolchildren receive instruction in classes that are designed for students of a particular ethnic group or that advocate ethnic solidarity -- Arizona will surely continue morphing into a national joke.

I don't know if this new law banning ethnic studies classes will uphold its stated desire to teach Arizona's schoolchildren "... to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people." More likely it will legislate that no non-Caucasian child can learn about his or her family's heritage.

What I do know is that all this immigration-related craziness should, as much as humanly possible, be kept out of school classrooms and playgrounds. We can't let our country get so hysterical over a single issue that we lose sight of how wrong it is to play politics with kids.