La Tribuna
22 octubre, 2011
MIAMI.- El 95% de los casi 400.000 inmigrantes deportados por las autoridades estadounidenses en el año fiscal que terminó en septiembre es de América Latina, principalmente de México, según cifras a las que The Associated Press tuvo acceso.
De los 396.906 inmigrantes que deportó la policía de inmigración ICE en el año fiscal 2011, 377.510 es originario de Latinoamérica, según información enviada a la AP por la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas, conocida como ICE por su nombre en inglés.
La información sobre las deportaciones provocó indignación entre los hispanos, que le reclaman al presidente Barack Obama que cumpla con su promesa electoral de implementar una reforma migratoria integral
Con 286.893 deportados, México ocupa el primer lugar de la lista de los 10 países con más nacionales repatriados. La cifra equivale a casi las tres cuartas partes del total de deportados de todo el mundo.
En la lista de los 10 países con más deportados que entregó el ICE a la AP solo figura uno que no es de Latinoamérica: Jamaica, que con 1.572 repatriados ocupa el décimo puesto.
En segundo lugar, detrás de México, se ubica Guatemala, con 33.324 deportados; seguido por Honduras, con 23.822; y El Salvador, con 18.870.
En el quinto puesto de la nómina figura Brasil, con 3.634; en el sexto Colombia, con 2.273; en el séptimo Ecuador, con 1.991, y en el octavo Nicaragua, con 1.693 repatriados.
Los otros dos países de Latinoamérica con deportados son Perú y Costa Rica, con 1.190 y 440, respectivamente, según el ICE. Ninguno de los dos figura en la lista de las 10 naciones con más deportados.
El ICE no comentó de inmediato la tendencia observada en las cifras. Néstor Yglesias, portavoz del ICE en Miami, dijo el jueves que debía consultar a la sede del ICE en Washington para responder las preguntas de AP al respecto. Expresó que desconocía cuándo llegarían las respuestas.
El detalle de deportados latinoamericanos fue revelado a la AP después que las autoridades informaron el martes que durante el año fiscal 2011 deportaron a 396.906 personas.
El ICE no informó si hay un récord de deportaciones más alto en la historia del país, pero sí dijo que era la cifra más alta desde que esa agencia fue fundada en 2003.
El cónsul general de México en Miami, Juan Miguel Gutiérrez Tinoco, dijo que como los mexicanos constituyen la mayor parte de la población hispana que vive en Estados Unidos, son los más deportados. También el hecho de la vecindad entre los dos países influye, estimó.
“La comunidad mexicana, aún siendo indocumentada, da grandes aportes a la economía”, expresó el cónsul.
“No son un costo fiscal”, manifestó el diplomático entrevistado por la AP y explicó que los deportados en su mayoría solo “buscan oportunidades para mejorar su calidad de vida”.
John Morton, director del ICE, dijo que el 55% de los deportados tenían condenas por delitos o infracciones, un 89% más que con respecto al total de criminales deportados en el año fiscal 2008. No se aclaró cuántos de esos delitos constituían violaciones de las leyes de inmigración.
En el 2008, un año antes de que asumiera como presidente Barack Obama, fueron deportados 349.068 latinoamericanos, cerca de 48.000 menos que en el 2011.
Hernán Martínez, activista de la organización de ayuda a inmigrantes Comité de Servicios de Amigos Estadounidenses, calificó de “abuso” y “violación a los derechos humanos” las deportaciones de latinoamericanos.
“No están deportando a quienes deberían deportar, a los criminales, porque (el servicio de) inmigración ataca a los inmigrantes, especialmente a los latinos”, consideró Martínez en diálogo con la AP.
“Es como si tener cara de mexicano fuera un delito… hay que mejorar la forma de regular la inmigración y no estar atacando a la gente indefensa”, dijo el activista de nacionalidad salvadoreña.
María Rodríguez, directora de la coalición de inmigrantes de la Florida, dijo que los latinoamericanos que están siendo deportados no son criminales.
“El ICE llama criminales a personas que son miembros activos de nuestra sociedad y que tienen profundas raíces en este país, a trabajadores agrícolas, padres de niños que son ciudadanos de Estados Unidos y estudiantes que serían elegibles para el Dream act”, dijo María Rodríguez, directora de la coalición de inmigrantes de la Florida, en una declaración enviada por correo electrónico a la AP.
El proyecto de ley conocido como Dream Act, que el Congreso rechazó, concedía un estatus legal a ciertos alumnos que terminaban la secundaria y que fueron traídos al país por sus padres antes de cumplir los 16 años y que además planeaban ir a la universidad o enrolarse en el servicio militar.
Aunque en el 2011 se deportaron casi 3.500 latinoamericanos más que en el año fiscal anterior, el porcentaje se mantuvo sin cambios debido a que también aumentó en cerca de 4.000 personas la cantidad total de deportados.
De acuerdo con el censo del 2010, en Estados Unidos viven cerca de 50,5 millones de hispanos, que representan al 16% de la población.
La población mexicana es la que ha crecido más en la última década, de 20,6 millones en el 2000 a 31,8 millones en el 2010. Así, casi el 63% de los hispanos que viven en Estados Unidos, es de origen mexicano, según el censo. (AP)
http://www.latribuna.hn/2011/10/22/eeuu-95-de-los-inmigrantes-deportados-son-latinoamericanos/
Showing posts with label Racial Profiling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Racial Profiling. Show all posts
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Latino residents sue ICE over apartment raids
By Associated Press
October 19, 2011
NASHVILLE — Fifteen residents of a Nashville apartment complex sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers Wednesday over what they said were violations of their constitutional rights during a raid last year.
October 19, 2011
NASHVILLE — Fifteen residents of a Nashville apartment complex sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers Wednesday over what they said were violations of their constitutional rights during a raid last year.
The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and claims ICE officers, along with Metro police, entered homes without warrants, consent or probable cause.
It alleged the raid was part of a conspiracy with the owners of the Clairmont Apartments to rid the complex of Latinos. All but one of the plaintiffs are Latino.
The suit claimed the officers violated several constitutional rights and seeks an unspecified amount of compensatory damages.
ICE and Metro’s deputy legal director both said they do not comment on pending litigation.
According to the suit, in early 2010, the Clairmont Apartments were sold in bankruptcy proceedings and taken over by a company that allowed conditions to deteriorate in an effort to force out current residents, many of whom were Latino.
The company abandoned its onsite offices, hired a “notoriously harsh” security company, allowed two buildings to lose hot water and saw an immigration raid that led to at least 20 detentions but no criminal arrests, the suit said.
The suit said ICE and Metro Gang Unit officers on Oct. 20, 2010, broke into apartments and held unarmed adults at gunpoint, shouting obscenities and racial epithets at them.
At a news conference announcing the suit, ACLU of Tennessee director Hedy Weinberg said her group respects the right of the United States to control immigration, but the rights to due process and equal protection apply to everyone.
“Looking Latino is not probable cause,” she said.
Megan Macaraeg with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said she was called to the apartments when the raid started.
“It was like nothing I had ever seen,” she said. Describing how she came to the U.S. to escape repression in the Philippines in 1974, she called the raid “personally appalling to me.”
Another federal suit was filed earlier this month by four Clairmont residents claiming similar rights violations during a smaller raid that took place Oct. 1, 2010.
http://www.timesnews.net/article/9037273/latino-residents-sue-ice-over-apartment-raids
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Tennessee Latinos Angered Over Alleged ICE Racial Profiling
Fox News Latino
September 21, 2011
Advocates in Tennessee claim Latinos in Shelbyville were purposely coerced by federal officials during immigration raids.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) denies the allegations.
Saturday's raids came five days after a hearing attended by representatives from the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security where Latino residents complained that they are the victims of racial profiling and illegal detention.
ICE agents showed up at the homes and businesses of at least two people involved in organizing the hearing, witnesses said. Neither person was arrested.
Megan Macaraeg, organizing director for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, described the way Shelbyville Latinos view the raids like this: "That'll teach you to speak up and say bad things about us and bring the feds in."
ICE spokesman Temple Black said in an email that allegations the raids were retaliatory are "without merit."
"ICE did not attend the meeting, track participants, or target supporters," he wrote. "Rather, wholly apart and distinct from the meeting, ICE identified and arrested three convicted criminals who were living at large in the community."
Regardless of the intention, the raids and a continuous show of force by ICE over the past several days has frightened residents, said TIRRC organizer Leticia Alvarez, who was in the store of one of the hearing organizers when ICE agents circled the parking lot, writing down license plate numbers.
"Everyone is scared," she said. ..."There is serious panic in the community."
A report on last week's hearing -- sponsored by TIRRC, Latinos Unidos de Shelbyville (United Latinos of Shelbyville) and the Washington, D.C.,-based Rights Working Group -- links many of the reported rights abuses to the implementation of Tennessee's "Jailer Bill," which went into effect in January. The bill requires jailers to try to determine whether inmates are legally in the country and alert ICE if they believe someone is an illegal immigrant.
According to the report, that has led some Shelbyville Police officers to deliberately target Latinos in an attempt to find and deport illegal immigrants.
TIRRC found through open records requests on traffic violations for the first quarter of 2011, that just four officers made 62 percent of the arrests of Latinos for traffic violations.
"Since Shelbyville police officers are assigned to patrol throughout the city rather than in a specific area, these statistics suggest that some officers may be intentionally targeting Latino drivers for traffic stops and arrests," the report states.
Shelbyville police Chief Austin Swing said he did not know how TIRRC had compiled its numbers, but he does not believe he has any out-of-control officers on his staff. He said he had not heard any complaints of racial profiling before the release of the report on Monday.
"If anything like that is going on, I'm not aware of it," he said. He added that he would investigate any substantiated accusations of officer misconduct.
The report also claims that, once in jail, Latinos are being held illegally past the time they should be released in order to give ICE more time to decide whether to pick them up for possible deportation proceedings.
Bill Geissler, a member of Latinos Unidos de Shelbyville, said he has been to the jail numerous times over the past year on behalf of immigrants and has seen the abuses firsthand.
Bedford County Sheriff's Capt. Tony Bennett disputed that, saying that jailers only hold inmates for the amount of time they are legally allowed.
“We're doing exactly what the immigration department has asked us to do," he said. And the report claims that ICE's Nashville Fugitive Operations Team asked the Bedford County
Probation Office to prepare a list of people with Hispanic-sounding last names to target for deportation.
"Latino probationers were profiled based on their perceived national origin," the report states.
Macaraeg said the allegations in the report were enough to make TIRRC call for a Justice Department investigation of illegal patterns and practices.
The raids on Saturday and a continuous show of force by immigrations agents since then have prompted them to request a fast-track of that process.
Based on reporting by the Associated Press.
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/09/21/tennessee-latinos-angered-over-alleged-ice-racial-profiling/#ixzz1YgxjQRSc
September 21, 2011
Advocates in Tennessee claim Latinos in Shelbyville were purposely coerced by federal officials during immigration raids.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) denies the allegations.
Saturday's raids came five days after a hearing attended by representatives from the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security where Latino residents complained that they are the victims of racial profiling and illegal detention.
ICE agents showed up at the homes and businesses of at least two people involved in organizing the hearing, witnesses said. Neither person was arrested.
Megan Macaraeg, organizing director for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, described the way Shelbyville Latinos view the raids like this: "That'll teach you to speak up and say bad things about us and bring the feds in."
ICE spokesman Temple Black said in an email that allegations the raids were retaliatory are "without merit."
"ICE did not attend the meeting, track participants, or target supporters," he wrote. "Rather, wholly apart and distinct from the meeting, ICE identified and arrested three convicted criminals who were living at large in the community."
Regardless of the intention, the raids and a continuous show of force by ICE over the past several days has frightened residents, said TIRRC organizer Leticia Alvarez, who was in the store of one of the hearing organizers when ICE agents circled the parking lot, writing down license plate numbers.
"Everyone is scared," she said. ..."There is serious panic in the community."
A report on last week's hearing -- sponsored by TIRRC, Latinos Unidos de Shelbyville (United Latinos of Shelbyville) and the Washington, D.C.,-based Rights Working Group -- links many of the reported rights abuses to the implementation of Tennessee's "Jailer Bill," which went into effect in January. The bill requires jailers to try to determine whether inmates are legally in the country and alert ICE if they believe someone is an illegal immigrant.
According to the report, that has led some Shelbyville Police officers to deliberately target Latinos in an attempt to find and deport illegal immigrants.
TIRRC found through open records requests on traffic violations for the first quarter of 2011, that just four officers made 62 percent of the arrests of Latinos for traffic violations.
"Since Shelbyville police officers are assigned to patrol throughout the city rather than in a specific area, these statistics suggest that some officers may be intentionally targeting Latino drivers for traffic stops and arrests," the report states.
Shelbyville police Chief Austin Swing said he did not know how TIRRC had compiled its numbers, but he does not believe he has any out-of-control officers on his staff. He said he had not heard any complaints of racial profiling before the release of the report on Monday.
"If anything like that is going on, I'm not aware of it," he said. He added that he would investigate any substantiated accusations of officer misconduct.
The report also claims that, once in jail, Latinos are being held illegally past the time they should be released in order to give ICE more time to decide whether to pick them up for possible deportation proceedings.
Bill Geissler, a member of Latinos Unidos de Shelbyville, said he has been to the jail numerous times over the past year on behalf of immigrants and has seen the abuses firsthand.
Bedford County Sheriff's Capt. Tony Bennett disputed that, saying that jailers only hold inmates for the amount of time they are legally allowed.
“We're doing exactly what the immigration department has asked us to do," he said. And the report claims that ICE's Nashville Fugitive Operations Team asked the Bedford County
Probation Office to prepare a list of people with Hispanic-sounding last names to target for deportation.
"Latino probationers were profiled based on their perceived national origin," the report states.
Macaraeg said the allegations in the report were enough to make TIRRC call for a Justice Department investigation of illegal patterns and practices.
The raids on Saturday and a continuous show of force by immigrations agents since then have prompted them to request a fast-track of that process.
Based on reporting by the Associated Press.
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/09/21/tennessee-latinos-angered-over-alleged-ice-racial-profiling/#ixzz1YgxjQRSc
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Immigrant hunting? What's happening to my country?
By Ruben Navarrette, Jr.
CNN Contributor
June 17, 2011
San Diego, California (CNN) -- What is it about immigration? It brings out the best in America. And yet, talking about it brings out the worst in many Americans. The United States is becoming withdrawn and bitter, and the national mood is becoming uglier.
It's nothing new. We live in a country that has -- for more than 220 years -- held the curious distinction of being a nation of immigrants that doesn't like immigrants. Our national motto isn't really "e pluribus unum." It's more like: "There goes the neighborhood."
Whether they come legally, illegally, or with a letter of reference from the Queen of England, every batch of foreign arrivals to these shores is instantly considered inferior to those who came before. It helps Americans feel better about their lot. Whereas they have always tended to think of immigrants as less than them, nowadays some go for broke and consider them less than human.
And, in the 21st century, it's open season on immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. I don't mean that literally. But unfortunately, these days, some folks might take it that way.
Some examples:
In Racine, Wisconsin, the owner of a local gas station began selling a bumper sticker that read: "Illegal Immigrant Hunting Permit." He apparently didn't find it the least bit offensive, but local immigrant activist Maria Morales did.
"It's clearly hate," the grandmother told a local TV reporter. "So people will see this and they'll say, 'Hey, we have the right to kill them.' "
Morales planned a protest at the gas station, but the owner backed down and pulled the stickers from the shelves.
End of story? No such luck. A few days later, someone went to Morales' house and lit a fire outside her bedroom window. A police officer called to the scene put out the blaze, and the Racine Police Department is investigating the incident, which some local residents are calling a hate crime.
Morales does not believe in coincidences.
"I thought right away, 'It's that darn sticker that I'm fighting against,' " she told the TV reporter.
Morales said a few days before the fire she got an anonymous letter in the mail accusing her of violating the First Amendment and attacking her crusade to ban the bumper sticker. It was signed, "Uncle Freaking Sammy."
The First Amendment only prohibits government from making laws infringing upon individuals' free speech rights. And, as long as we're talking about rights, if the person who created that bumper sticker had the right to make it, and the store had the right to sell it, then Morales had the right to be offended by it. But no one has the right to commit an act of violence or attempt to destroy private property as an act of retaliation or intimidation.
Meanwhile, at the Newark Liberty International Airport, what you might call an arm of "Uncle Freaking Sammy" has also, according to an internal federal report, been improperly hunting immigrants.
I'm not talking about the U.S. Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would make too much sense. After all, that sort of thing is practically in the job description of those agencies.
The immigrant hunters in question worked for the Transportation Security Administration. Their specific job title is: Behavior Detection Officers. These officers are trained to detect suspicious behavior and they have the authority to pull air travelers aside for additional questioning. They're supposed to use that specialized training and extra authority to look for terrorists who might appear nervous or jittery.
Instead, according to TSA officials who blew the whistle and additional documents obtained by the Newark, New Jersey, newspaper, The Star-Ledger, some of these behavior detection officers would regularly single out passengers who were Mexican or Dominican in order to check their visas and passports.
The internal TSA report that looked at all this (the Star-Ledger said it was dated January 2010), found that those passengers who, once pulled aside, didn't have their paperwork in order would be questioned again and have their bags re-checked. Then they'd be sent along to immigration authorities, supposedly because of suspicious behavior.
According to one whistle-blower, TSA supervisors knew about and condoned the practice; in fact, the officers were jokingly called "the great Mexican hunters."
The TSA said in a statement that it does not profile passengers based on race, ethnicity or religion and that, in this case, "TSA's policies were overstepped."
Interestingly enough, no attempt was made to single out passengers with invalid paperwork who might have been Irish, Swedish, Russian or Belgian. Light skin has its privileges.
And not just at the Newark airport. All over the country, law enforcement agencies are being empowered to profile Latinos as a shortcut way of looking for illegal immigrants. Arizona sparked a disturbing national trend when it passed SB 1070, deputizing local and state police to enforce federal immigration laws. According to the National Immigration Forum, an immigration advocacy group, in the past year, lawmakers in at least 20 states -- most recently, Georgia and Alabama -- have tried to follow Arizona's lead.
What has happened to my country? Our nation's soul has been coarsened by the immigration debate. Americans now say, do and believe the most cruel and outrageous things when it comes to immigrants -- both legal and illegal, and especially those with dark skin who speak Spanish. Anything goes. There is no shame and no punishment.
Is this the America that nativists are so desperate to preserve? If so, is it even worth the effort?
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette Jr.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/17/navarrette.immigrant.hunters
CNN Contributor
June 17, 2011
San Diego, California (CNN) -- What is it about immigration? It brings out the best in America. And yet, talking about it brings out the worst in many Americans. The United States is becoming withdrawn and bitter, and the national mood is becoming uglier.
It's nothing new. We live in a country that has -- for more than 220 years -- held the curious distinction of being a nation of immigrants that doesn't like immigrants. Our national motto isn't really "e pluribus unum." It's more like: "There goes the neighborhood."
Whether they come legally, illegally, or with a letter of reference from the Queen of England, every batch of foreign arrivals to these shores is instantly considered inferior to those who came before. It helps Americans feel better about their lot. Whereas they have always tended to think of immigrants as less than them, nowadays some go for broke and consider them less than human.
And, in the 21st century, it's open season on immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. I don't mean that literally. But unfortunately, these days, some folks might take it that way.
Some examples:
In Racine, Wisconsin, the owner of a local gas station began selling a bumper sticker that read: "Illegal Immigrant Hunting Permit." He apparently didn't find it the least bit offensive, but local immigrant activist Maria Morales did.
"It's clearly hate," the grandmother told a local TV reporter. "So people will see this and they'll say, 'Hey, we have the right to kill them.' "
Morales planned a protest at the gas station, but the owner backed down and pulled the stickers from the shelves.
End of story? No such luck. A few days later, someone went to Morales' house and lit a fire outside her bedroom window. A police officer called to the scene put out the blaze, and the Racine Police Department is investigating the incident, which some local residents are calling a hate crime.
Morales does not believe in coincidences.
"I thought right away, 'It's that darn sticker that I'm fighting against,' " she told the TV reporter.
Morales said a few days before the fire she got an anonymous letter in the mail accusing her of violating the First Amendment and attacking her crusade to ban the bumper sticker. It was signed, "Uncle Freaking Sammy."
The First Amendment only prohibits government from making laws infringing upon individuals' free speech rights. And, as long as we're talking about rights, if the person who created that bumper sticker had the right to make it, and the store had the right to sell it, then Morales had the right to be offended by it. But no one has the right to commit an act of violence or attempt to destroy private property as an act of retaliation or intimidation.
Meanwhile, at the Newark Liberty International Airport, what you might call an arm of "Uncle Freaking Sammy" has also, according to an internal federal report, been improperly hunting immigrants.
I'm not talking about the U.S. Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would make too much sense. After all, that sort of thing is practically in the job description of those agencies.
The immigrant hunters in question worked for the Transportation Security Administration. Their specific job title is: Behavior Detection Officers. These officers are trained to detect suspicious behavior and they have the authority to pull air travelers aside for additional questioning. They're supposed to use that specialized training and extra authority to look for terrorists who might appear nervous or jittery.
Instead, according to TSA officials who blew the whistle and additional documents obtained by the Newark, New Jersey, newspaper, The Star-Ledger, some of these behavior detection officers would regularly single out passengers who were Mexican or Dominican in order to check their visas and passports.
The internal TSA report that looked at all this (the Star-Ledger said it was dated January 2010), found that those passengers who, once pulled aside, didn't have their paperwork in order would be questioned again and have their bags re-checked. Then they'd be sent along to immigration authorities, supposedly because of suspicious behavior.
According to one whistle-blower, TSA supervisors knew about and condoned the practice; in fact, the officers were jokingly called "the great Mexican hunters."
The TSA said in a statement that it does not profile passengers based on race, ethnicity or religion and that, in this case, "TSA's policies were overstepped."
Interestingly enough, no attempt was made to single out passengers with invalid paperwork who might have been Irish, Swedish, Russian or Belgian. Light skin has its privileges.
And not just at the Newark airport. All over the country, law enforcement agencies are being empowered to profile Latinos as a shortcut way of looking for illegal immigrants. Arizona sparked a disturbing national trend when it passed SB 1070, deputizing local and state police to enforce federal immigration laws. According to the National Immigration Forum, an immigration advocacy group, in the past year, lawmakers in at least 20 states -- most recently, Georgia and Alabama -- have tried to follow Arizona's lead.
What has happened to my country? Our nation's soul has been coarsened by the immigration debate. Americans now say, do and believe the most cruel and outrageous things when it comes to immigrants -- both legal and illegal, and especially those with dark skin who speak Spanish. Anything goes. There is no shame and no punishment.
Is this the America that nativists are so desperate to preserve? If so, is it even worth the effort?
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette Jr.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/17/navarrette.immigrant.hunters
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Traffic stops that lead to deportations raise concerns
By Gabrielle Banks
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Over a two-hour stretch one night in April, state troopers stopped two cars on a highway in Inwood, W.Va., a little-known hamlet surrounded by apple orchards in the northeast corner of the state.
In both stops, troopers asked the vehicles' occupants, all Hispanic patrons of a nearby Latin nightclub, for identification. When some handed over Mexican driver's licenses, the troopers contacted the Pittsburgh branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained the drivers and passengers on charges of illegal entry.
Six occupants of the stopped vehicles face deportation proceedings and are challenging the police stops as unwarranted. Immigration lawyers say their clients fell victim to a pattern of racial profiling by state troopers, who they say purposely staked out motorists a mile from Lobo's, a dance club that plays "norteno" music on Saturday nights and draws largely Hispanic patrons from Winchester, Va.
The attorneys plan to ask immigration court judges to throw out these cases on the grounds that the state troopers stopped the cars because of their occupants' race.
"ICE will not tolerate racial profiling at all," said public affairs agent Mark M. Medvesky. He would not comment specifically on the Inwood stops since proceedings are pending.
Sgt. Michael Baylous, spokesman for the West Virginia State Police, was also unable to comment on the Inwood stops for the same reason, but said, "We don't do racial profiling here in West Virginia. Law enforcement is in the business of criminal profiling. We do actively profile criminals, people who violate the law. But we have not, nor will we ever engage in racial profiling."
David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer and law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said this sounded like "a classic case" of racial profiling, adding, "The cops will tell you (racial profiling) is illegal and they'll tell you they don't do it. Cops will say, 'I stopped them for a legitimate reason. I ran their names and found reason to report them.'"
Tackling a racial profiling allegation will be complicated in the parallel universe of immigration court, where clients are not afforded the same protections as in criminal or civil court.
In a civil rights suit, for example, an individual can request discovery of police evidence that might help demonstrate a pattern of racism. In immigration court, there's no guarantee a judge will allow that request. One of the three Inwood attorneys, Michelle Mendez, borrowing a phrase from an immigration judge, said tackling these matters in immigration court "is like trying a death penalty case in traffic court."
Immigration lawyers say the Inwood arrests are part of a nationwide pattern of de facto crackdowns on Hispanics by state and municipal law enforcement in the spirit of the new law passed in Arizona.
"A lot of people end up in removal proceedings because of a traffic stop," said Mendez, who works out of Catholic Charities in Washington, D.C. These disconnected arrests, wherever they occur, often aren't even a blip on a local community's radar, she said.
Many deportation arrests slip through the cracks before a qualified lawyer gets a look at them, attorneys said. An Amnesty International report in 2009 found that among individuals facing removal proceedings in Pennsylvania, 84 percent of detained immigrants and 58 percent of all clients did not have attorneys.
Valerie Burch, an American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania attorney representing three Inwood cases, said after troopers booked the two cars' occupants at the Eastern Regional Jail in Martinsburg, W.Va., none of the suspects was able to phone potential attorneys, or notify family members or day care providers of their whereabouts for three days.
The phones at the jail did not work, they said.
The group came to the attention of a lawyer when they were taken to York County Prison, an East Coast hub for ICE that processes thousands of detainees facing deportation each year.
The six Inwood cases are inching forward in immigration court, which operates differently from what most people picture when they think of a court. Immigration court is not under the judicial branch -- it's an administrative body under the executive branch of the federal government, which means clients aren't guaranteed the right to a lawyer and other constitutional protections.
Burch, of the ACLU, offered a preview of what she will tell the judge.
"I think there were many arrests of Hispanic motorists leaving Lobo's in recent months. ... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's what used to happen down South to the African-American population.
"When people used to get together in one place they would be persecuted by law enforcement. Police would find any reason to stop them and harass them because of the color of their skin," she said.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/nation_world/article_8f34e554-f73d-11df-94ec-001cc4c03286.html
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Over a two-hour stretch one night in April, state troopers stopped two cars on a highway in Inwood, W.Va., a little-known hamlet surrounded by apple orchards in the northeast corner of the state.
In both stops, troopers asked the vehicles' occupants, all Hispanic patrons of a nearby Latin nightclub, for identification. When some handed over Mexican driver's licenses, the troopers contacted the Pittsburgh branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained the drivers and passengers on charges of illegal entry.
Six occupants of the stopped vehicles face deportation proceedings and are challenging the police stops as unwarranted. Immigration lawyers say their clients fell victim to a pattern of racial profiling by state troopers, who they say purposely staked out motorists a mile from Lobo's, a dance club that plays "norteno" music on Saturday nights and draws largely Hispanic patrons from Winchester, Va.
The attorneys plan to ask immigration court judges to throw out these cases on the grounds that the state troopers stopped the cars because of their occupants' race.
"ICE will not tolerate racial profiling at all," said public affairs agent Mark M. Medvesky. He would not comment specifically on the Inwood stops since proceedings are pending.
Sgt. Michael Baylous, spokesman for the West Virginia State Police, was also unable to comment on the Inwood stops for the same reason, but said, "We don't do racial profiling here in West Virginia. Law enforcement is in the business of criminal profiling. We do actively profile criminals, people who violate the law. But we have not, nor will we ever engage in racial profiling."
David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer and law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said this sounded like "a classic case" of racial profiling, adding, "The cops will tell you (racial profiling) is illegal and they'll tell you they don't do it. Cops will say, 'I stopped them for a legitimate reason. I ran their names and found reason to report them.'"
Tackling a racial profiling allegation will be complicated in the parallel universe of immigration court, where clients are not afforded the same protections as in criminal or civil court.
In a civil rights suit, for example, an individual can request discovery of police evidence that might help demonstrate a pattern of racism. In immigration court, there's no guarantee a judge will allow that request. One of the three Inwood attorneys, Michelle Mendez, borrowing a phrase from an immigration judge, said tackling these matters in immigration court "is like trying a death penalty case in traffic court."
Immigration lawyers say the Inwood arrests are part of a nationwide pattern of de facto crackdowns on Hispanics by state and municipal law enforcement in the spirit of the new law passed in Arizona.
"A lot of people end up in removal proceedings because of a traffic stop," said Mendez, who works out of Catholic Charities in Washington, D.C. These disconnected arrests, wherever they occur, often aren't even a blip on a local community's radar, she said.
Many deportation arrests slip through the cracks before a qualified lawyer gets a look at them, attorneys said. An Amnesty International report in 2009 found that among individuals facing removal proceedings in Pennsylvania, 84 percent of detained immigrants and 58 percent of all clients did not have attorneys.
Valerie Burch, an American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania attorney representing three Inwood cases, said after troopers booked the two cars' occupants at the Eastern Regional Jail in Martinsburg, W.Va., none of the suspects was able to phone potential attorneys, or notify family members or day care providers of their whereabouts for three days.
The phones at the jail did not work, they said.
The group came to the attention of a lawyer when they were taken to York County Prison, an East Coast hub for ICE that processes thousands of detainees facing deportation each year.
The six Inwood cases are inching forward in immigration court, which operates differently from what most people picture when they think of a court. Immigration court is not under the judicial branch -- it's an administrative body under the executive branch of the federal government, which means clients aren't guaranteed the right to a lawyer and other constitutional protections.
Burch, of the ACLU, offered a preview of what she will tell the judge.
"I think there were many arrests of Hispanic motorists leaving Lobo's in recent months. ... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's what used to happen down South to the African-American population.
"When people used to get together in one place they would be persecuted by law enforcement. Police would find any reason to stop them and harass them because of the color of their skin," she said.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/nation_world/article_8f34e554-f73d-11df-94ec-001cc4c03286.html
Monday, November 1, 2010
Judge throws out ICE Aspen deportation case
By Andrew Travers
Aspen Daily News
October 30, 2010
A Denver immigration judge recently threw out a deportation case against three allegedly undocumented foreign workers from Aspen, finding that federal immigration authorities illegally raided their Lazy Glen home in March of last year.
The raid on the three-story cabin, where nine adults and three children were staying, was conducted around 5:30 a.m. on March 24, 2009. Agents entered the house, woke up the residents in their bedrooms, yelling that there was an automobile accident outside and stating they were police. They then detained eight of the residents as illegal immigrants.
One man was immediately deported. The other seven have challenged the legality of the raid in immigration court, through Glenwood Springs attorney Ted Hess.
The raid was conducted by a Glenwood Springs-based U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) team, led by special agent Steve Turza.
In a 13-page ruling issued Oct. 21, Immigration Judge John W. Davis suppressed all collected evidence and dismissed the deportation cases against sisters Isabel and Citlali Guerrero, both housekeepers at the Aspen Square Condominium Hotel at the time of the raid, and Mario Alberto Soto-Gutierrez.
Judge Davis ruled that the warrantless, consentless raid was illegal.
Such rulings based on the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment are rare in immigration cases, and Hess said Friday that it was the first of its kind in Colorado.
Only if a search is found to be an “egregious” violation of search and seizure rights as defined in the Fourth Amendment, immigration judges have the authority to throw cases out.
“While interpretations of ‘egregiousness’ may vary,” Judge Davis wrote, “the decisions made by the ICE agents, particularly Special Agent Turza, who led the investigation, were beyond what a reasonable officer could or should have believed was lawful ... The court finds that the agents’ pre-dawn entry compiled with blatant misrepresentations to sleeping residents, conveying terrifying news of an accident is, in fact, egregious.”
Hess praised the judge’s ruling. “He could not in good conscience, uphold the raid,” Hess said.
Agent Turza testified that ICE received an anonymous tip in November 2008 that residents of the Lazy Glen cabin were in the U.S. illegally, and may have been involved in the theft of a television from the Aspen Square. The raid occurred five months later.
“The plan was simple: knock on the door and get consent to speak to the aliens,” Turza is quoted by the judge as testifying.
He testified that they conducted the operation in the pre-dawn hours because the residents were known to commute to work early in the morning. He said they did not get consent before entering because their knocks on the door went unanswered and his team feared the residents may have been poisoned by a carbon-monoxide leak, as an Aspen family had several months earlier.
The judge referred to this reasoning as a “ruse” and wrote that Turza also testified that the door was open when they arrived, which would diminish any possibility of a carbon monoxide problem.
“Generally,” Judge Davis wrote, “the Court found the agents’ testimony to be unreliable.”
Hess characterized it more bluntly: “This is one of the few times you will actually get an immigration judge saying that they [the ICE agents] lied.”
The judge wrote of the detainees: “All of the witnesses testified credibly that they were awoken in the pre-dawn hours and that the agents were identifying themselves as ‘police’ and yelling about an accident as they knocked on the various bedroom doors in the house.”
Citlali Guerrero testified at a July hearing in Denver that she had been sleeping in a room with her 5-year-old son when the ICE officers woke them. “The biggest mistreatment was psychological,” the judge quotes her as testifying.
As their deportation cases have proceeded, all seven local respondents have been released from detention facilities, either on immigration bonds or under ICE monitoring.
Hess said the Aspen area raid was part of an ongoing and largely unchecked trend of improper ICE operations, in which agents illegally enter homes, seize residents there who are not targets of the investigation, and then detain them based only on their racial or ethnic appearance. It was documented in a recent Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law study, titled, “Constitution on ICE.”
“They are just going freaking crazy,” Hess said, “and because this is a distinct and insular and disenfranchised minority, they are getting away with it ... I’m not going to go as far as calling them Nazis but these are Gestapo tactics. They are running roughshod over fundamental rights.”
Most cases of this kind do end in deportation, Hess said, because the individuals do not hire lawyers or fight the legality of such raids. “I was really happy when this particular group decided to stand up and resist,” he said.
A spokesman for ICE was reviewing Judge Davis’s ruling Friday, but did not respond with any comments before press time.
The deportation proceedings are still pending against four of the Lazy Glen residents. Hess is asking to have those cases dismissed under the same grounds as the case Judge Davis threw out. Those hearings are in court in on Apr. 25 and June 20, 2011.
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/143412
Aspen Daily News
October 30, 2010
A Denver immigration judge recently threw out a deportation case against three allegedly undocumented foreign workers from Aspen, finding that federal immigration authorities illegally raided their Lazy Glen home in March of last year.
The raid on the three-story cabin, where nine adults and three children were staying, was conducted around 5:30 a.m. on March 24, 2009. Agents entered the house, woke up the residents in their bedrooms, yelling that there was an automobile accident outside and stating they were police. They then detained eight of the residents as illegal immigrants.
One man was immediately deported. The other seven have challenged the legality of the raid in immigration court, through Glenwood Springs attorney Ted Hess.
The raid was conducted by a Glenwood Springs-based U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) team, led by special agent Steve Turza.
In a 13-page ruling issued Oct. 21, Immigration Judge John W. Davis suppressed all collected evidence and dismissed the deportation cases against sisters Isabel and Citlali Guerrero, both housekeepers at the Aspen Square Condominium Hotel at the time of the raid, and Mario Alberto Soto-Gutierrez.
Judge Davis ruled that the warrantless, consentless raid was illegal.
Such rulings based on the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment are rare in immigration cases, and Hess said Friday that it was the first of its kind in Colorado.
Only if a search is found to be an “egregious” violation of search and seizure rights as defined in the Fourth Amendment, immigration judges have the authority to throw cases out.
“While interpretations of ‘egregiousness’ may vary,” Judge Davis wrote, “the decisions made by the ICE agents, particularly Special Agent Turza, who led the investigation, were beyond what a reasonable officer could or should have believed was lawful ... The court finds that the agents’ pre-dawn entry compiled with blatant misrepresentations to sleeping residents, conveying terrifying news of an accident is, in fact, egregious.”
Hess praised the judge’s ruling. “He could not in good conscience, uphold the raid,” Hess said.
Agent Turza testified that ICE received an anonymous tip in November 2008 that residents of the Lazy Glen cabin were in the U.S. illegally, and may have been involved in the theft of a television from the Aspen Square. The raid occurred five months later.
“The plan was simple: knock on the door and get consent to speak to the aliens,” Turza is quoted by the judge as testifying.
He testified that they conducted the operation in the pre-dawn hours because the residents were known to commute to work early in the morning. He said they did not get consent before entering because their knocks on the door went unanswered and his team feared the residents may have been poisoned by a carbon-monoxide leak, as an Aspen family had several months earlier.
The judge referred to this reasoning as a “ruse” and wrote that Turza also testified that the door was open when they arrived, which would diminish any possibility of a carbon monoxide problem.
“Generally,” Judge Davis wrote, “the Court found the agents’ testimony to be unreliable.”
Hess characterized it more bluntly: “This is one of the few times you will actually get an immigration judge saying that they [the ICE agents] lied.”
The judge wrote of the detainees: “All of the witnesses testified credibly that they were awoken in the pre-dawn hours and that the agents were identifying themselves as ‘police’ and yelling about an accident as they knocked on the various bedroom doors in the house.”
Citlali Guerrero testified at a July hearing in Denver that she had been sleeping in a room with her 5-year-old son when the ICE officers woke them. “The biggest mistreatment was psychological,” the judge quotes her as testifying.
As their deportation cases have proceeded, all seven local respondents have been released from detention facilities, either on immigration bonds or under ICE monitoring.
Hess said the Aspen area raid was part of an ongoing and largely unchecked trend of improper ICE operations, in which agents illegally enter homes, seize residents there who are not targets of the investigation, and then detain them based only on their racial or ethnic appearance. It was documented in a recent Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law study, titled, “Constitution on ICE.”
“They are just going freaking crazy,” Hess said, “and because this is a distinct and insular and disenfranchised minority, they are getting away with it ... I’m not going to go as far as calling them Nazis but these are Gestapo tactics. They are running roughshod over fundamental rights.”
Most cases of this kind do end in deportation, Hess said, because the individuals do not hire lawyers or fight the legality of such raids. “I was really happy when this particular group decided to stand up and resist,” he said.
A spokesman for ICE was reviewing Judge Davis’s ruling Friday, but did not respond with any comments before press time.
The deportation proceedings are still pending against four of the Lazy Glen residents. Hess is asking to have those cases dismissed under the same grounds as the case Judge Davis threw out. Those hearings are in court in on Apr. 25 and June 20, 2011.
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/143412
Friday, July 16, 2010
‘Immigrant’ List Sets Off Fears
By KIRK JOHNSON
The New York Times
July 14, 2010
SALT LAKE CITY — A list of 1,300 Utah residents described as illegal immigrants has sown fear among some Hispanics here, and prompted an investigation into its origins and dissemination.
Each page of the list is headed with the words “Illegal Immigrants” and each entry contains details about the individuals listed — from their address and telephone number to their date of birth and, in the case of pregnant women, their due dates. The letter was received by law enforcement and media outlets on Monday and Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Gov. Gary R. Herbert said Wednesday that an investigation was under way to see if state employees might have been involved in releasing the private information.
A memorandum accompanying the list said it was from Concerned Citizens of the United States. It urged immediate deportation proceedings against the people listed, as well as publication of their names by the news media.
The memo said an earlier version of the list had been sent to federal immigration officials in April. It promised that more names would be forthcoming, and promised authorities, “We will be listening and watching.”
“We are not violent, nor do we support violence,” the letter said.
A spokeswoman for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that the agency had received a letter from the group, dated in early April.
The list came at a time of increased tension over illegal immigration, both in Utah and in the country, two weeks before neighboring Arizona enacts a tough new law aimed at fighting illegal immigration. The federal government has sued Arizona over the law. Here in Salt Lake City, a group of state lawmakers is drafting a bill patterned after it.
Several people on the list expressed anxiety that their personal information had been released, and said they were concerned about their safety and that of their families. Some of those on the list said the heightened pressure could force them from the country.
One Guatemalan man, who spoke only on condition that he be identified as Monzon, admitted that he was in the country illegally. He said he had tried hard to keep off lists of all sorts, essentially by being the best American he could — paying his taxes and staying out of debt.
“I have always tried to keep my record clean,” he said.
But he struck a fatalistic note that might please the letter writers: “It might just be time to reflect and think if the time has come to leave,” he said.
A woman who identified herself as Liset said she was from Mexico and in the United States illegally. She said that her 2-year-old son was born in the United States, but that she had filed papers to give him Mexican citizenship as well.
“If something were to happen he will go with me to Mexico,” she said. She said she believed her personal information on the list came from her application for Medicaid. As for what it was like having reporters call, reading from a sheaf of papers containing large and small details about her life, she said, “I find it strange that you know so many things.”
Angie Welling, a spokeswoman for Governor Herbert, a Republican, said that the release of the material was significant, but that the specificity of detail was even more troubling.
“Any release of private information of this nature, especially the depth and breadth of it, is concerning,” Ms. Welling said. “The governor wants to be sure that a state agency wasn’t involved, and if it was, to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and to get to the bottom of who was responsible.”
Improper release of information from state records is a misdemeanor. The medical information on the list, however, from the notations about pregnancies, could potentially elevate the criminal implications far beyond that, to felony charges and lengthy prison sentences, for violation of federal medical privacy laws.
Proyecto Latino de Utah, one of the most prominent immigrant advocacy organizations in the state, received many frantic calls on Wednesday. People had heard about the list, but because no major news organization has actually published its full contents, the callers mainly wanted to know one thing: Am I on it?
“Nine missed calls this morning,” said Tony Yapías, the group’s director, glancing at his cellphone in an interview in his office. Most of the callers, he said, were not on the list.
One woman said that not knowing what could unfold next was the worst thing. “What’s going to happen?” she asked.
Mr. Yapías, the former director of the state’s Office of Hispanic Affairs, said he was convinced that the list had come from the State Department of Workforce Services, an agency that combines resources for job seekers, employers and people seeking assistance like food stamps or Medicaid. The list includes information that other agencies might collect, he said, but Workforce Services’ application form includes a question that other information-laden agencies like the Division of Motor Vehicles, for example, would not ever ask: “Is anyone in your home currently pregnant?”
Ms. Welling at the governor’s office said that the state’s Department of Technology Services was leading the investigation, looking into whether a digital trail might been left behind if state computers were used to prepare the list. She said that Workforce Services, in particular, was doing its own investigation, which she called “extensive.”
She said that to her knowledge no state agency had started any investigations of individuals based on the list.
A spokesman the Department of Workforce Services, Dave Lewis, said a team of information specialists was looking for patterns — whether the computer formatting would provide clues about the document’s origin or creation and whether there had been any unusual activity in people accessing that information inside the agency.
For people who found themselves named and workers in Utah’s government alike, the result was a real-life version of the old childhood game of “Telephone.” Information had leaked out from somewhere. Where? Was it accurate? Who had compiled it? Who now had copies of the list and where might the chain of whispers go from here? Would the leakers be found?
Dabrali Jimenez and Lillian Polanco contributed reporting from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/us/15utah.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=immigrant%20list&st=cse
The New York Times
July 14, 2010
SALT LAKE CITY — A list of 1,300 Utah residents described as illegal immigrants has sown fear among some Hispanics here, and prompted an investigation into its origins and dissemination.
Each page of the list is headed with the words “Illegal Immigrants” and each entry contains details about the individuals listed — from their address and telephone number to their date of birth and, in the case of pregnant women, their due dates. The letter was received by law enforcement and media outlets on Monday and Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Gov. Gary R. Herbert said Wednesday that an investigation was under way to see if state employees might have been involved in releasing the private information.
A memorandum accompanying the list said it was from Concerned Citizens of the United States. It urged immediate deportation proceedings against the people listed, as well as publication of their names by the news media.
The memo said an earlier version of the list had been sent to federal immigration officials in April. It promised that more names would be forthcoming, and promised authorities, “We will be listening and watching.”
“We are not violent, nor do we support violence,” the letter said.
A spokeswoman for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that the agency had received a letter from the group, dated in early April.
The list came at a time of increased tension over illegal immigration, both in Utah and in the country, two weeks before neighboring Arizona enacts a tough new law aimed at fighting illegal immigration. The federal government has sued Arizona over the law. Here in Salt Lake City, a group of state lawmakers is drafting a bill patterned after it.
Several people on the list expressed anxiety that their personal information had been released, and said they were concerned about their safety and that of their families. Some of those on the list said the heightened pressure could force them from the country.
One Guatemalan man, who spoke only on condition that he be identified as Monzon, admitted that he was in the country illegally. He said he had tried hard to keep off lists of all sorts, essentially by being the best American he could — paying his taxes and staying out of debt.
“I have always tried to keep my record clean,” he said.
But he struck a fatalistic note that might please the letter writers: “It might just be time to reflect and think if the time has come to leave,” he said.
A woman who identified herself as Liset said she was from Mexico and in the United States illegally. She said that her 2-year-old son was born in the United States, but that she had filed papers to give him Mexican citizenship as well.
“If something were to happen he will go with me to Mexico,” she said. She said she believed her personal information on the list came from her application for Medicaid. As for what it was like having reporters call, reading from a sheaf of papers containing large and small details about her life, she said, “I find it strange that you know so many things.”
Angie Welling, a spokeswoman for Governor Herbert, a Republican, said that the release of the material was significant, but that the specificity of detail was even more troubling.
“Any release of private information of this nature, especially the depth and breadth of it, is concerning,” Ms. Welling said. “The governor wants to be sure that a state agency wasn’t involved, and if it was, to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and to get to the bottom of who was responsible.”
Improper release of information from state records is a misdemeanor. The medical information on the list, however, from the notations about pregnancies, could potentially elevate the criminal implications far beyond that, to felony charges and lengthy prison sentences, for violation of federal medical privacy laws.
Proyecto Latino de Utah, one of the most prominent immigrant advocacy organizations in the state, received many frantic calls on Wednesday. People had heard about the list, but because no major news organization has actually published its full contents, the callers mainly wanted to know one thing: Am I on it?
“Nine missed calls this morning,” said Tony Yapías, the group’s director, glancing at his cellphone in an interview in his office. Most of the callers, he said, were not on the list.
One woman said that not knowing what could unfold next was the worst thing. “What’s going to happen?” she asked.
Mr. Yapías, the former director of the state’s Office of Hispanic Affairs, said he was convinced that the list had come from the State Department of Workforce Services, an agency that combines resources for job seekers, employers and people seeking assistance like food stamps or Medicaid. The list includes information that other agencies might collect, he said, but Workforce Services’ application form includes a question that other information-laden agencies like the Division of Motor Vehicles, for example, would not ever ask: “Is anyone in your home currently pregnant?”
Ms. Welling at the governor’s office said that the state’s Department of Technology Services was leading the investigation, looking into whether a digital trail might been left behind if state computers were used to prepare the list. She said that Workforce Services, in particular, was doing its own investigation, which she called “extensive.”
She said that to her knowledge no state agency had started any investigations of individuals based on the list.
A spokesman the Department of Workforce Services, Dave Lewis, said a team of information specialists was looking for patterns — whether the computer formatting would provide clues about the document’s origin or creation and whether there had been any unusual activity in people accessing that information inside the agency.
For people who found themselves named and workers in Utah’s government alike, the result was a real-life version of the old childhood game of “Telephone.” Information had leaked out from somewhere. Where? Was it accurate? Who had compiled it? Who now had copies of the list and where might the chain of whispers go from here? Would the leakers be found?
Dabrali Jimenez and Lillian Polanco contributed reporting from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/us/15utah.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=immigrant%20list&st=cse
Friday, May 21, 2010
UFCW, SEIU lead suit against discriminatory Arizona law
By: Mark Gruenberg
People's World
May 20 2010
PHOENIX (PAI) - The United Food and Commercial Workers and the Service Employees with civil liberties groups are leading, a class-action suit to stop Arizona's new law targeting people based solely on the suspicion - due to skin color - that they are undocumented. The groups sued on May 17 in federal court in Phoenix.
The law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, R-Ariz., and passed by the legislature's Republican majority, orders state and local law enforcement officials to stop anyone they suspect of being undocumented and demand they immediately produce proof they legally live in the U.S.
Those who cannot immediately produce such papers are arrested and detained and could be deported.
Both large unions, which have tens of thousands of Spanish-speaking members, were outraged. Both also are among many groups that will boycott Arizona until the law is repealed or declared unconstitutional.
"Arizona's legislation is unworkable, it is unconstitutional and it undermines our nation's rich immigrant history and heritage. It is a recipe for racial profiling and a marked retreat from the values and ideals that make America strong," UFCW President Joe Hansen said when the class-action suit was filed.
"For our members, this issue is personal. UFCW members have seen first-hand how enforcement-only tactics fuel racial profiling - and lead to the trampling of our Constitution," he declared. He specifically cited Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, undertaken during the anti-worker GOP Bush government, against unionized Swift & Co., meatpacking plants.
Of the more than 1,200 workers arrested in those ICE raids on Swift, only 62 - not all of them with Hispanic names - were undocumented. Swift was crippled so badly financially by having its plants closed for days, due to a decimated workforce, that its owners were forced to sell the historic Chicago-based firm to a Brazilian meatpacker.
"We are filing this suit to protect the rights of our members and all workers in Arizona - and to uphold the values and ideals that make our nation strong," Hansen said.
"UFCW has been at the forefront of the fight for immigration reform because we have seen firsthand the devastation caused by enforcement-only strategies. We've seen families torn apart, we've seen communities destroyed and we've seen workers'
rights shredded. We need a comprehensive overhaul of our broken immigration
system at the federal level, not regressive, racially motivated laws enacted on a state-by-state basis," he explained.
"Arizona's new immigration law is a flawed solution to a serious problem," said SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina, the son of immigrants. "If implemented, the law will violate our most basic civil rights, burden local law enforcement and undermine public safety - all while failing to solve Arizona's immigration problems.
"We hope to stop the law before it institutionalizes racial profiling, pushes an unfunded mandate on cities and counties already strapped for cash, and wastes precious taxpayer resources on the costly litigation that will inevitably ensue," Medina added.
The class action suit charges the Arizona law violates the U.S. Constitution by unlawfully interfering with federal power and authority over immigration matters. It also invites racial profiling against people of color by law enforcement in violation of the Constitution's equal protection guarantee and prohibition on unreasonable seizures, and the law infringes on the free speech rights of Arizonans.
The suit also says Arizona's law violates that state's own constitutional ban on investigatory stops by law enforcement without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
Besides UFCW and SEIU, organizations that filed the case in federal court in Phoenix include the American Civil Liberties Union, which drafted the complaint, SEIU Local 5 in Phoenix, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), the NAACP and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC).
"We saw during the Bush administration raids on our Swift plants how Latino workers were treated, how they were profiled because of the color of their skin, how law enforcement separated workers based simply on who they believed were undocumented," Hansen said. "These heavy-handed tactics unfairly - and incorrectly - targeted U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
"That is why we are committed to fighting this legislation - and why we are abstaining from doing business in the state of Arizona until this issue is resolved."
Arizona's law has drawn nationwide and foreign protests. The Mexican government, for the first time ever, issued a "travel advisory" for its citizens, warning them to stay out of Arizona. Mexican President Felipe Calderon, on a state visit to Washington in mid-May, officially protested the Arizona law to both President Barack Obama and Congress. There are also demands that major league baseball move its future All-Star Game, scheduled for Phoenix, out of the city, especially since baseball teams have a large percentage of Latin American players.
http://peoplesworld.org/ufcw-seiu-lead-suit-against-discriminatory-arizona-law/
People's World
May 20 2010
PHOENIX (PAI) - The United Food and Commercial Workers and the Service Employees with civil liberties groups are leading, a class-action suit to stop Arizona's new law targeting people based solely on the suspicion - due to skin color - that they are undocumented. The groups sued on May 17 in federal court in Phoenix.
The law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, R-Ariz., and passed by the legislature's Republican majority, orders state and local law enforcement officials to stop anyone they suspect of being undocumented and demand they immediately produce proof they legally live in the U.S.
Those who cannot immediately produce such papers are arrested and detained and could be deported.
Both large unions, which have tens of thousands of Spanish-speaking members, were outraged. Both also are among many groups that will boycott Arizona until the law is repealed or declared unconstitutional.
"Arizona's legislation is unworkable, it is unconstitutional and it undermines our nation's rich immigrant history and heritage. It is a recipe for racial profiling and a marked retreat from the values and ideals that make America strong," UFCW President Joe Hansen said when the class-action suit was filed.
"For our members, this issue is personal. UFCW members have seen first-hand how enforcement-only tactics fuel racial profiling - and lead to the trampling of our Constitution," he declared. He specifically cited Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, undertaken during the anti-worker GOP Bush government, against unionized Swift & Co., meatpacking plants.
Of the more than 1,200 workers arrested in those ICE raids on Swift, only 62 - not all of them with Hispanic names - were undocumented. Swift was crippled so badly financially by having its plants closed for days, due to a decimated workforce, that its owners were forced to sell the historic Chicago-based firm to a Brazilian meatpacker.
"We are filing this suit to protect the rights of our members and all workers in Arizona - and to uphold the values and ideals that make our nation strong," Hansen said.
"UFCW has been at the forefront of the fight for immigration reform because we have seen firsthand the devastation caused by enforcement-only strategies. We've seen families torn apart, we've seen communities destroyed and we've seen workers'
rights shredded. We need a comprehensive overhaul of our broken immigration
system at the federal level, not regressive, racially motivated laws enacted on a state-by-state basis," he explained.
"Arizona's new immigration law is a flawed solution to a serious problem," said SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina, the son of immigrants. "If implemented, the law will violate our most basic civil rights, burden local law enforcement and undermine public safety - all while failing to solve Arizona's immigration problems.
"We hope to stop the law before it institutionalizes racial profiling, pushes an unfunded mandate on cities and counties already strapped for cash, and wastes precious taxpayer resources on the costly litigation that will inevitably ensue," Medina added.
The class action suit charges the Arizona law violates the U.S. Constitution by unlawfully interfering with federal power and authority over immigration matters. It also invites racial profiling against people of color by law enforcement in violation of the Constitution's equal protection guarantee and prohibition on unreasonable seizures, and the law infringes on the free speech rights of Arizonans.
The suit also says Arizona's law violates that state's own constitutional ban on investigatory stops by law enforcement without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
Besides UFCW and SEIU, organizations that filed the case in federal court in Phoenix include the American Civil Liberties Union, which drafted the complaint, SEIU Local 5 in Phoenix, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), the NAACP and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC).
"We saw during the Bush administration raids on our Swift plants how Latino workers were treated, how they were profiled because of the color of their skin, how law enforcement separated workers based simply on who they believed were undocumented," Hansen said. "These heavy-handed tactics unfairly - and incorrectly - targeted U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
"That is why we are committed to fighting this legislation - and why we are abstaining from doing business in the state of Arizona until this issue is resolved."
Arizona's law has drawn nationwide and foreign protests. The Mexican government, for the first time ever, issued a "travel advisory" for its citizens, warning them to stay out of Arizona. Mexican President Felipe Calderon, on a state visit to Washington in mid-May, officially protested the Arizona law to both President Barack Obama and Congress. There are also demands that major league baseball move its future All-Star Game, scheduled for Phoenix, out of the city, especially since baseball teams have a large percentage of Latin American players.
http://peoplesworld.org/ufcw-seiu-lead-suit-against-discriminatory-arizona-law/
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Report: East Haven Police Target Latinos
By Thomas MacMillan
New Haven Independent
Apr 23, 2010
A week after the feds slammed the town’s police procedures, a damning new report prepared by Yale student attorneys indicates that East Haven police ticket Latino drivers at vastly disproportionate rates—then record them as white motorists, concealing the facts.
The new report, issued Thursday evening by Yale Law School students, states that over an eight-month period, nearly 60 percent of traffic tickets in East Haven involved Latino drivers. Yet police recorded the ethnicity of drivers as “Hispanic” in less than 5 percent of traffic tickets, according to the report. Read it here.
The Yale report follows just one week after the U.S. Department of Justice issued a letter to East Haven’s lawyer, stating that the department had found significant “areas of concern” in its investigation of policies at the East Haven police department. The Department of Justice has been looking into allegations—raised by a Fair Haven church—that East Haven police are engaged in harassment and abuse of Latinos.
East Haven business owners like Marcia Chacon (pictured) claim Latinos are subject to unwarranted traffic stops, harassment, and even violence at the hands of East Haven cops. Police have denied the charges.
The Department of Justice’s letter to East Haven listed seven different areas of concern, from inadequate oversight of officers’ use of force to a lack of a proper citizen complaint process. That letter prompted East Haven Mayor April Capone Almon to place police chief Len Gallo on administrative leave this week. He turned over his badge and gun on Wednesday. Read the letter here.
The police brass shake-up is the latest development in an ongoing story of alleged police harassment of Latinos just over New Haven’s border in East Haven—a border that separates not just towns, but two vastly different approaches to a growing local immigrant community.
The alleged ongoing harassment first came to light last year when a New Haven priest, Father James Manship, was arrested in an East Haven store while videotaping police who were allegedly harassing the storeowners. Click play to see his camera footage.
Manship Friday welcomed the traffic ticket report as quantitative proof that a problem exists, which will make it more difficult to ignore. “Now it’s some hard facts,” he said. “Are you going to keep saying we don’t have a problem here?”
Manship’s Fair Haven church, St. Rose of Lima, filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, which the department decided last December to investigate.
Last fall, as part of its own investigation into the East Haven Police Department, St. Rose of Lima requested to see records of traffic tickets issued by police on Main Street and Route 80 between June 1, 2008 and Feb. 28, 2009. Those tickets were analyzed by Yale student attorneys assisting St. Rose, resulting in Thursday’s report.
The East Haven Police Department did not turn over all the information requested by St. Rose of Lima. That failure is the subject of an ongoing Freedom of Information case.
In the newly released study, Yale students compared the names on the traffic tickets to lists of Hispanic names, including a list developed by the U.S. Census. The students then determined that 56.3 percent of traffic tickets in the eight-month period were issued to Hispanics. This is significant in a town with a Hispanic population of just 5.8 percent, the report states.
Yale students then compared their analysis of the ethnicity of drivers with the ethnicities reported by East Haven police. They found that police “failed to correctly identify the race of vast majority of individuals to whom they issued traffic tickets.” Police reported giving tickets mostly to white people. Police recorded Hispanic drivers for only 4.8 percent of tickets, according to the report.
An accompanying graph shows that one officer in particular, Dennis Spaulding, is responsible for 97 tickets issued to people with Hispanic names. Another graph shows that Spaulding reported issuing 120 tickets to white people, four to black people, and none to Hispanic drivers in the same period. Spaulding has been accused by name of racial harassment by Latino business owners.
Another graph shows that Hispanic drivers on average received higher fines following traffic stops than other ethnicities.
One section of the report states that traffic tickets were issued more proportionally by ethnicity when East Haven police were engaged in “Click It or Ticket,” a national program of seatbelt enforcement checkpoints. East Haven police stopped only five Hispanics and 35 white people at such checkpoints. The report suggests that since Click It or Ticket is a national program, “the pattern of discriminatory enforcement dissipates when the EHPD is operating under state and/or federal guidelines.”
In conclusion, the report states that the disproportionate level of traffic stops involving Hispanics, provides “indirect support” for allegations of racial harassment and abuse. Combined with the improper recording of ethnicities, the findings “may suggest EHPD officers lack the training and supervision they need to fairly enforce the law,” the report states.
Tafari Lumumba, a student attorney working on the case, said the report will be sent to the Department of Justice, “to supplement their investigation.”
The ultimate goal is to “change the culture of the department,” Lumumba said. Chief Gallo’s administrative leave is a “good first step,” but the policing problems in East Haven are department-wide.
“It’s not just one or two bad apples,” Lumumba said.
Meanwhile, police harassment continues in East Haven, Lumumba said. He and the rest of the legal team still receive phone calls every week from people complaining about the use of racial slurs by police, or reports of police “putting their hands on people.”
“Not much has truly changed,” Lumumba said.
“As recently as Sunday night, somebody else was accosted and threatened,” Manship said.
From the beginning, St. Rose of Lima has been trying to document what has been happening in East Haven, Manship said. “But we’ve been told by town officials that it’s not happening.”
On Friday afternoon, Chacon was behind the counter of her Main Street business, My Country Store. She said the policing situation has improved recently. “People still tell me they are stopped for no reason,” she said. “Some people are still afraid.”
The ouster of Chief Gallo is a sign of justice, Chacon said. But more needs to be done. New regulations need to be implemented at the police department, she said.
Asked for comment about the traffic tickets report, Mayor Almon’s office emailed a statement released after the mayor ordered Chief Gallo to administrative leave:
“Department of Justice has noted a complete lack of training, guidelines, oversight and supervision in a number of critical areas. The question now is; has there been a complete lack of leadership in these critical areas? At the end of the day my concern is how to prevent this from exposing the town to liability which would ultimately cost taxpayers’ money.”
http://newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/report_tickets_show_east_haven_targets_latinos/id_25588
New Haven Independent
Apr 23, 2010
A week after the feds slammed the town’s police procedures, a damning new report prepared by Yale student attorneys indicates that East Haven police ticket Latino drivers at vastly disproportionate rates—then record them as white motorists, concealing the facts.
The new report, issued Thursday evening by Yale Law School students, states that over an eight-month period, nearly 60 percent of traffic tickets in East Haven involved Latino drivers. Yet police recorded the ethnicity of drivers as “Hispanic” in less than 5 percent of traffic tickets, according to the report. Read it here.
The Yale report follows just one week after the U.S. Department of Justice issued a letter to East Haven’s lawyer, stating that the department had found significant “areas of concern” in its investigation of policies at the East Haven police department. The Department of Justice has been looking into allegations—raised by a Fair Haven church—that East Haven police are engaged in harassment and abuse of Latinos.
East Haven business owners like Marcia Chacon (pictured) claim Latinos are subject to unwarranted traffic stops, harassment, and even violence at the hands of East Haven cops. Police have denied the charges.
The Department of Justice’s letter to East Haven listed seven different areas of concern, from inadequate oversight of officers’ use of force to a lack of a proper citizen complaint process. That letter prompted East Haven Mayor April Capone Almon to place police chief Len Gallo on administrative leave this week. He turned over his badge and gun on Wednesday. Read the letter here.
The police brass shake-up is the latest development in an ongoing story of alleged police harassment of Latinos just over New Haven’s border in East Haven—a border that separates not just towns, but two vastly different approaches to a growing local immigrant community.
The alleged ongoing harassment first came to light last year when a New Haven priest, Father James Manship, was arrested in an East Haven store while videotaping police who were allegedly harassing the storeowners. Click play to see his camera footage.
Manship Friday welcomed the traffic ticket report as quantitative proof that a problem exists, which will make it more difficult to ignore. “Now it’s some hard facts,” he said. “Are you going to keep saying we don’t have a problem here?”
Manship’s Fair Haven church, St. Rose of Lima, filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, which the department decided last December to investigate.
Last fall, as part of its own investigation into the East Haven Police Department, St. Rose of Lima requested to see records of traffic tickets issued by police on Main Street and Route 80 between June 1, 2008 and Feb. 28, 2009. Those tickets were analyzed by Yale student attorneys assisting St. Rose, resulting in Thursday’s report.
The East Haven Police Department did not turn over all the information requested by St. Rose of Lima. That failure is the subject of an ongoing Freedom of Information case.
In the newly released study, Yale students compared the names on the traffic tickets to lists of Hispanic names, including a list developed by the U.S. Census. The students then determined that 56.3 percent of traffic tickets in the eight-month period were issued to Hispanics. This is significant in a town with a Hispanic population of just 5.8 percent, the report states.
Yale students then compared their analysis of the ethnicity of drivers with the ethnicities reported by East Haven police. They found that police “failed to correctly identify the race of vast majority of individuals to whom they issued traffic tickets.” Police reported giving tickets mostly to white people. Police recorded Hispanic drivers for only 4.8 percent of tickets, according to the report.
An accompanying graph shows that one officer in particular, Dennis Spaulding, is responsible for 97 tickets issued to people with Hispanic names. Another graph shows that Spaulding reported issuing 120 tickets to white people, four to black people, and none to Hispanic drivers in the same period. Spaulding has been accused by name of racial harassment by Latino business owners.
Another graph shows that Hispanic drivers on average received higher fines following traffic stops than other ethnicities.
One section of the report states that traffic tickets were issued more proportionally by ethnicity when East Haven police were engaged in “Click It or Ticket,” a national program of seatbelt enforcement checkpoints. East Haven police stopped only five Hispanics and 35 white people at such checkpoints. The report suggests that since Click It or Ticket is a national program, “the pattern of discriminatory enforcement dissipates when the EHPD is operating under state and/or federal guidelines.”
In conclusion, the report states that the disproportionate level of traffic stops involving Hispanics, provides “indirect support” for allegations of racial harassment and abuse. Combined with the improper recording of ethnicities, the findings “may suggest EHPD officers lack the training and supervision they need to fairly enforce the law,” the report states.
Tafari Lumumba, a student attorney working on the case, said the report will be sent to the Department of Justice, “to supplement their investigation.”
The ultimate goal is to “change the culture of the department,” Lumumba said. Chief Gallo’s administrative leave is a “good first step,” but the policing problems in East Haven are department-wide.
“It’s not just one or two bad apples,” Lumumba said.
Meanwhile, police harassment continues in East Haven, Lumumba said. He and the rest of the legal team still receive phone calls every week from people complaining about the use of racial slurs by police, or reports of police “putting their hands on people.”
“Not much has truly changed,” Lumumba said.
“As recently as Sunday night, somebody else was accosted and threatened,” Manship said.
From the beginning, St. Rose of Lima has been trying to document what has been happening in East Haven, Manship said. “But we’ve been told by town officials that it’s not happening.”
On Friday afternoon, Chacon was behind the counter of her Main Street business, My Country Store. She said the policing situation has improved recently. “People still tell me they are stopped for no reason,” she said. “Some people are still afraid.”
The ouster of Chief Gallo is a sign of justice, Chacon said. But more needs to be done. New regulations need to be implemented at the police department, she said.
Asked for comment about the traffic tickets report, Mayor Almon’s office emailed a statement released after the mayor ordered Chief Gallo to administrative leave:
“Department of Justice has noted a complete lack of training, guidelines, oversight and supervision in a number of critical areas. The question now is; has there been a complete lack of leadership in these critical areas? At the end of the day my concern is how to prevent this from exposing the town to liability which would ultimately cost taxpayers’ money.”
http://newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/report_tickets_show_east_haven_targets_latinos/id_25588
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Sweeping Immigration Bill Passes Senate; Bill Could Be Up For Debate In House In Weeks
By Elizabeth Erwin
Reporter, KPHO.com
February 17, 2010
PHOENIX -- A bill at the state Capitol is stirring up the immigration debate. It's a big one, and some are even calling it extreme. It's already passed the Senate and could be up for debate in the house in just a couple weeks.
The bill would allow police officers to ask about anyone's immigration status, even if they're not suspected of a crime. It would also make it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally, and make it a crime to transport or conceal an illegal immigrant. The bill would make it a crime for an illegal immigrant to solicit work in a public place, or for anyone to hire someone from a vehicle.
Those opposed said it's racial profiling, while those in favor said it protects police and citizens statewide.
Somos America president Lydia Guzman said, "According to some indicators from some law enforcement agencies, looking Hispanic, speaking Spanish, listening to Spanish music, those could be indicators that someone is here undocumented. Under that definition, I would be subject to that discrimination."
Phoenix Law Enforcement Association consultant Levi Bolton said, "To actually create a protected class of folks that are almost immune from enforcement action, that is problematic. When it translates at some future time to some tragic situation those things are highlighted."
CBS 5 News has spent the past few days trying to get a comment from the bill's sponsor, Russell Pearce, who has not returned phone calls.
Nevertheless, he has been mass e-mailing his supporters and constituents, asking them to bombard their representatives with calls in support of the bill.
http://www.kpho.com/politics/22585166/detail.html
Reporter, KPHO.com
February 17, 2010
PHOENIX -- A bill at the state Capitol is stirring up the immigration debate. It's a big one, and some are even calling it extreme. It's already passed the Senate and could be up for debate in the house in just a couple weeks.
The bill would allow police officers to ask about anyone's immigration status, even if they're not suspected of a crime. It would also make it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally, and make it a crime to transport or conceal an illegal immigrant. The bill would make it a crime for an illegal immigrant to solicit work in a public place, or for anyone to hire someone from a vehicle.
Those opposed said it's racial profiling, while those in favor said it protects police and citizens statewide.
Somos America president Lydia Guzman said, "According to some indicators from some law enforcement agencies, looking Hispanic, speaking Spanish, listening to Spanish music, those could be indicators that someone is here undocumented. Under that definition, I would be subject to that discrimination."
Phoenix Law Enforcement Association consultant Levi Bolton said, "To actually create a protected class of folks that are almost immune from enforcement action, that is problematic. When it translates at some future time to some tragic situation those things are highlighted."
CBS 5 News has spent the past few days trying to get a comment from the bill's sponsor, Russell Pearce, who has not returned phone calls.
Nevertheless, he has been mass e-mailing his supporters and constituents, asking them to bombard their representatives with calls in support of the bill.
http://www.kpho.com/politics/22585166/detail.html
Monday, January 4, 2010
Advocate uses texting to warn of crime sweeps
The Associated Press
Jan. 4, 2010
PHOENIX — An advocate for immigrant and civil rights has started using text messages to warn residents about crime sweeps by a high-profile Arizona sheriff.
Lydia Guzman, director of the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group Respect/Respeto, is the trunk of a sophisticated texting tree designed to alert thousands of people within minutes to the details of the sweeps, which critics contend are an excuse to round up illegal immigrants.
Guzman said the messages are part of an effort to protect Latinos and others from becoming victims of racial profiling by sheriff's deputies. Deputies have been accused of stopping Hispanics, including citizens and legal immigrants, for minor traffic violations to check their immigration status.
"Everyone is responsible for sending it out to their own networks, and that is how it spreads like wildfire," Guzman said of the text messages.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has repeatedly said his deputies do not engage in racial profiling, and he publicizes the details of his crime sweeps ahead of time. He said he suspects the real goal of the text messages is to help illegal immigrants avoid arrest.
"This little group of people is (in favor of) open borders, and they don't like what I am doing. That is the bottom line," Arpaio said. "But it isn't interfering with our operations because every time we do it, we still arrest a good number of people, including illegal aliens."
Arpaio has conducted 13 sweeps since March 2008, and deputies have arrested 669 people, about half of whom were held on immigration violations.
The sheriff said his opponents are walking a line between exercising free speech and breaking the law by helping immigration violators avoid detection. He said the texts are possibly even tipping off human-smuggling organizations.
Guzman said she sends the messages to a wide range of groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, Copwatch and various immigrant-rights groups such as Somos America and Puente. She concedes that some who receive the text messages likely use the information to avoid being caught and deported.
Andy Hessick, a constitutional law professor at Arizona State University, said sending warnings to people who might be subject to racial profiling would likely be considered free speech. But sending messages with the specific intent of warning illegal immigrants to help them avoid arrest could be akin to being an accomplice after a crime.
David Hudson Jr., a First Amendment scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, said the messages are protected free speech because they are merely letting people know what Arpaio is doing, similar to publicizing DUI checkpoints and speed traps or flashing your headlights when police are nearby.
"That is not unlawful," he said. "It's the conveyance of truthful information."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/immigration/6797608.html
Jan. 4, 2010
PHOENIX — An advocate for immigrant and civil rights has started using text messages to warn residents about crime sweeps by a high-profile Arizona sheriff.
Lydia Guzman, director of the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group Respect/Respeto, is the trunk of a sophisticated texting tree designed to alert thousands of people within minutes to the details of the sweeps, which critics contend are an excuse to round up illegal immigrants.
Guzman said the messages are part of an effort to protect Latinos and others from becoming victims of racial profiling by sheriff's deputies. Deputies have been accused of stopping Hispanics, including citizens and legal immigrants, for minor traffic violations to check their immigration status.
"Everyone is responsible for sending it out to their own networks, and that is how it spreads like wildfire," Guzman said of the text messages.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has repeatedly said his deputies do not engage in racial profiling, and he publicizes the details of his crime sweeps ahead of time. He said he suspects the real goal of the text messages is to help illegal immigrants avoid arrest.
"This little group of people is (in favor of) open borders, and they don't like what I am doing. That is the bottom line," Arpaio said. "But it isn't interfering with our operations because every time we do it, we still arrest a good number of people, including illegal aliens."
Arpaio has conducted 13 sweeps since March 2008, and deputies have arrested 669 people, about half of whom were held on immigration violations.
The sheriff said his opponents are walking a line between exercising free speech and breaking the law by helping immigration violators avoid detection. He said the texts are possibly even tipping off human-smuggling organizations.
Guzman said she sends the messages to a wide range of groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, Copwatch and various immigrant-rights groups such as Somos America and Puente. She concedes that some who receive the text messages likely use the information to avoid being caught and deported.
Andy Hessick, a constitutional law professor at Arizona State University, said sending warnings to people who might be subject to racial profiling would likely be considered free speech. But sending messages with the specific intent of warning illegal immigrants to help them avoid arrest could be akin to being an accomplice after a crime.
David Hudson Jr., a First Amendment scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, said the messages are protected free speech because they are merely letting people know what Arpaio is doing, similar to publicizing DUI checkpoints and speed traps or flashing your headlights when police are nearby.
"That is not unlawful," he said. "It's the conveyance of truthful information."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/immigration/6797608.html
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Immigrant raids leave Long Beach leaders upset
By Greg Mellen Staff Writer
12/19/2009
Contra Costa Times
LONG BEACH - Leaders of several Latino service providers, politicians and residents in Long Beach still expressed concern over last week's fugitive surge by Immigration Customs and Enforcement.
Agents from the organization came to Long Beach as part of a statewide effort that netted 286 criminal aliens.
While local officials had no issue with ICE tracking and detaining criminal aliens, they saw it as a secretive and ham-handed approach.
Amelia Nieto, Jessica Quintana and other leaders of social service providers that cater to Latinos, said they received numerous calls from clients telling them that ICE officers were hanging out in parking lots and around popular bargain shopping sites frequented by immigrants.
The rumors kept many Latinos from leaving their homes, Nieto and Quintana said, and spread a palpable fear among the community.
Although Quintana and Nieto did not find any ICE agents, they said rumors were rampant in the community.
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said her organization made only one arrest in Long Beach and did not engage in any random sweeps.
The arrest in Long Beach was made on the 1200 block of Walnut Avenue of a Nigerian national, who was a registered sex offender with numerous arrests and a conviction dating to 1996. His name was not released.
"These were targeted arrests, and they were all serious criminals," Kice said.
She said if residents saw agents in a parking lot, they would only be gathering before trying to apprehend someone.
Quintana and Nieto say they don't oppose law organizations going after specific criminals.
"We don't want criminals running in the community," Quintana, the executive director of Centro CHA said. "If (ICE has) specific information, if they're going to homes and they know who they're picking up, that's their job. That I fully understand. But when they go to Targets and Superior Markets and Walmarts and places heavily frequented by Latinos, that's a concern."
Kice said if agents were in any parking lots in Long Beach, then it only would have been a staging area near where the suspect was arrested.
When the rumors of the ICE presence were brought to the City Council on Tuesday, interim Long Beach Police Chief Billy Quach said he had no advance notice of the ICE operation.
Not true says Kice, who says her agents told her they briefed officers in Long Beach's sex crimes unit a day before.
Wherever the communication broke down, it was troubling to 7th District Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga, who said the council was in the dark about the action.
"We're the ones who have to be prepared to answer questions of our constituents," she said.
Uranga said she expected the city to make a public statement about its role, or lack of a role, in the surge.
More important, she said, was that the city needs to "get ahead of this" before workers for the 2010 census begin canvassing neighborhoods.
Uranga said rumors of an ICE sweep will make residents more hesitant to answer their doors when census takers come knocking.
Nieto, the head of Centro Shalom, says the ICE action undid months of work she had done attempting to allay fears in the immigrant community.
Traditionally, immigrant communities are often undercounted in the census.
This is important to the city because many federal dollars and programs are attached to population counts, as the 10- year census is the benchmark.
According to ICE, 286 foreign nationals with criminal records were picked up in the three-day statewide operation. More than 100 have already been removed and the rest face deportation.
In a news release ICE said "More than 80 percent had prior convictions for serious or violent crimes, such as rape by force, armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Also included in the group are 30 convicted sex offenders, many whose crimes involved sexual assaults on children."
At a news conference Friday, John Morton, homeland security assistant secretary for ICE, said the operation involved more than 400 agents and officers from ICE, the U.S. Marshals Service and several other state and local agencies.
Northern California ac- counted for the largest number of arrests during the operation where 119 were taken into custody. The Los Angeles area recorded the next highest number of arrests with 96. Those detained were from 30 nations, including countries in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Last year, 35,094 arrests were made nationally in special operations. ICE removed a total of 136,126 criminal aliens from the U.S. last year, a record number.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_14035406
12/19/2009
Contra Costa Times
LONG BEACH - Leaders of several Latino service providers, politicians and residents in Long Beach still expressed concern over last week's fugitive surge by Immigration Customs and Enforcement.
Agents from the organization came to Long Beach as part of a statewide effort that netted 286 criminal aliens.
While local officials had no issue with ICE tracking and detaining criminal aliens, they saw it as a secretive and ham-handed approach.
Amelia Nieto, Jessica Quintana and other leaders of social service providers that cater to Latinos, said they received numerous calls from clients telling them that ICE officers were hanging out in parking lots and around popular bargain shopping sites frequented by immigrants.
The rumors kept many Latinos from leaving their homes, Nieto and Quintana said, and spread a palpable fear among the community.
Although Quintana and Nieto did not find any ICE agents, they said rumors were rampant in the community.
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said her organization made only one arrest in Long Beach and did not engage in any random sweeps.
The arrest in Long Beach was made on the 1200 block of Walnut Avenue of a Nigerian national, who was a registered sex offender with numerous arrests and a conviction dating to 1996. His name was not released.
"These were targeted arrests, and they were all serious criminals," Kice said.
She said if residents saw agents in a parking lot, they would only be gathering before trying to apprehend someone.
Quintana and Nieto say they don't oppose law organizations going after specific criminals.
"We don't want criminals running in the community," Quintana, the executive director of Centro CHA said. "If (ICE has) specific information, if they're going to homes and they know who they're picking up, that's their job. That I fully understand. But when they go to Targets and Superior Markets and Walmarts and places heavily frequented by Latinos, that's a concern."
Kice said if agents were in any parking lots in Long Beach, then it only would have been a staging area near where the suspect was arrested.
When the rumors of the ICE presence were brought to the City Council on Tuesday, interim Long Beach Police Chief Billy Quach said he had no advance notice of the ICE operation.
Not true says Kice, who says her agents told her they briefed officers in Long Beach's sex crimes unit a day before.
Wherever the communication broke down, it was troubling to 7th District Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga, who said the council was in the dark about the action.
"We're the ones who have to be prepared to answer questions of our constituents," she said.
Uranga said she expected the city to make a public statement about its role, or lack of a role, in the surge.
More important, she said, was that the city needs to "get ahead of this" before workers for the 2010 census begin canvassing neighborhoods.
Uranga said rumors of an ICE sweep will make residents more hesitant to answer their doors when census takers come knocking.
Nieto, the head of Centro Shalom, says the ICE action undid months of work she had done attempting to allay fears in the immigrant community.
Traditionally, immigrant communities are often undercounted in the census.
This is important to the city because many federal dollars and programs are attached to population counts, as the 10- year census is the benchmark.
According to ICE, 286 foreign nationals with criminal records were picked up in the three-day statewide operation. More than 100 have already been removed and the rest face deportation.
In a news release ICE said "More than 80 percent had prior convictions for serious or violent crimes, such as rape by force, armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Also included in the group are 30 convicted sex offenders, many whose crimes involved sexual assaults on children."
At a news conference Friday, John Morton, homeland security assistant secretary for ICE, said the operation involved more than 400 agents and officers from ICE, the U.S. Marshals Service and several other state and local agencies.
Northern California ac- counted for the largest number of arrests during the operation where 119 were taken into custody. The Los Angeles area recorded the next highest number of arrests with 96. Those detained were from 30 nations, including countries in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Last year, 35,094 arrests were made nationally in special operations. ICE removed a total of 136,126 criminal aliens from the U.S. last year, a record number.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_14035406
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Activists denounce raids at bus stations and racial profiling against Latinos
By Aurelia Fierros
December 18, 2009
AMLA Border and Immigration Examiner
Citing the Greyhound bus stations in San Bernardino and Claremont as target sites for immigration raids, activists said Border Patrol agents have increased the incidence of their operations during this holiday season, utilizing racial profiling against individuals with a Latino appearance.
At a press conference in front of the San Bernardino station Thursday, immigrant rights advocates said they will call for a nationwide boycott of Greyhound if the raids continue.
“Private businesses have the right to ask Border Patrol agents not to conduct operations on their property,” said Emilio Amaya, executive director of the San Bernardino Community Services Center, which has provided legal assistance to people arrested. “Unfortunately, if these transportation companies do not take measures to protect their passengers, who are being faced with racial profiling and deportation on the way to visit family for the holidays, they will lose the trust and business of one of their most faithful customer bases, the Latino community.”
The community leaders, part of a group known as the Immigration Raids Response Network have launched a campaign to inform the immigrant community of the Border Patrol raids while Greyhound issued a statement responding to the group's concerns.
"Greyhound only recently became aware of these practices," said Maureen Richmond, spokeswoman for Dallas, Texas-based Greyhound Lines, Inc. "We plan on reaching out to (immigration) officials for further information. Greyhound seeks to balance the lawful and reasonable activities of law enforcement with the dignity and privacy of our valued customers."
Immigrant advocates plan to distribute fliers at churches, swap meets and other public sites to advise undocumented immigrants of their rights if they are detained.
http://www.examiner.com/x-9270-LA-Border-and-Immigration-Examiner~y2009m12d18-Activists-denounce-raids-at-bus-stations-and-racial-profiling-against-Latinos
December 18, 2009
AMLA Border and Immigration Examiner
Citing the Greyhound bus stations in San Bernardino and Claremont as target sites for immigration raids, activists said Border Patrol agents have increased the incidence of their operations during this holiday season, utilizing racial profiling against individuals with a Latino appearance.
At a press conference in front of the San Bernardino station Thursday, immigrant rights advocates said they will call for a nationwide boycott of Greyhound if the raids continue.
“Private businesses have the right to ask Border Patrol agents not to conduct operations on their property,” said Emilio Amaya, executive director of the San Bernardino Community Services Center, which has provided legal assistance to people arrested. “Unfortunately, if these transportation companies do not take measures to protect their passengers, who are being faced with racial profiling and deportation on the way to visit family for the holidays, they will lose the trust and business of one of their most faithful customer bases, the Latino community.”
The community leaders, part of a group known as the Immigration Raids Response Network have launched a campaign to inform the immigrant community of the Border Patrol raids while Greyhound issued a statement responding to the group's concerns.
"Greyhound only recently became aware of these practices," said Maureen Richmond, spokeswoman for Dallas, Texas-based Greyhound Lines, Inc. "We plan on reaching out to (immigration) officials for further information. Greyhound seeks to balance the lawful and reasonable activities of law enforcement with the dignity and privacy of our valued customers."
Immigrant advocates plan to distribute fliers at churches, swap meets and other public sites to advise undocumented immigrants of their rights if they are detained.
http://www.examiner.com/x-9270-LA-Border-and-Immigration-Examiner~y2009m12d18-Activists-denounce-raids-at-bus-stations-and-racial-profiling-against-Latinos
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Club Caliente Owner Cries Racial Profiling As Cops Make Case To Punish Him
By Lauren Smiley
December 1, 2009
San Francisco Weekly
The Entertainment Commission will review Club Caliente's entertainment permit at its meeting this afternoon after the SoMa bar was busted three times in recent months for having minors on the premises.
The club's owner, Maurice Salinas, is alleging racial profiling, "intimidation and harassment" by the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) and the San Francisco Police Department, after officers performed a "raid" on the club to check for ID's. Salinas says that the bar's mostly Latino clientele has been scared away by the false rumor that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the bar.
"I feel that my business has been ruined as the results of these raids and it is being profiled for catering to the Latino community," he writes in a press release.
According to Salinas, an ABC agent and San Francisco Police partner found minors on the premises three times this fall:
* On Sunday, October 18, the bar was cited for having a minor inside, who told the officers he was underage and had no identification. Salinas said the bar found a California driver's license of a similar looking person who was over 21 years old, and believes the person had thrown it on the floor when the police came up to him to avoid the repercussions of using a fake ID.
* On Saturday, November 14, the bar was again cited for having a minor inside after a patron was caught with a fake City College ID that indicated he was over 21.
* On Sunday, November 15, the same ABC agent and officer called for police backup, and some customers, including ones whose "physical appearance indicated that they were 30 years old or older," were ordered to stand against the wall outside the club, and eventually released. Apparently, patrons inside thought it was an Immigration raid, and some were "in tears," according to Salinas. The authorities found one person who used his 22-year-old brother's Mexican Consulate ID to get in and cited the bar for having a minor on the premises.
Salinas says the police officer told him that only California IDs are valid forms of ID to get into a bar. If so, the officer was incorrect. State law defines a valid ID as any issued by a federal, state, county or municipal government that includes a photo, name, date of birth, physical description, and is currently valid.
Salinas claims that security staff talked to the officer about the door policy, but the officer yelled at them to be quiet and threatened to take them to jail.
ABC spokesman John Carr confirmed the three citations, but declined to comment further on the case. He said that Club Caliente had no disciplinary history before this fall.
Salinas says the bar closed down early at 11 p.m. on Sunday November 15 -- the day after the large-scale ID checks by the authorities -- after no one showed up. The club usually draws 150 patrons on Sunday nights, he added.
"I feel that I am being treated differently," Salinas wrote in the release, "and that [the police officer] would not act in the same way at a club with a white...ownership and clientele, intimidating the service staff and putting all the customers against the outside wall of buildings to check on their age and/or proof of ID."
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/12/entertainment_commission_to_de.php
December 1, 2009
San Francisco Weekly
The Entertainment Commission will review Club Caliente's entertainment permit at its meeting this afternoon after the SoMa bar was busted three times in recent months for having minors on the premises.
The club's owner, Maurice Salinas, is alleging racial profiling, "intimidation and harassment" by the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) and the San Francisco Police Department, after officers performed a "raid" on the club to check for ID's. Salinas says that the bar's mostly Latino clientele has been scared away by the false rumor that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the bar.
"I feel that my business has been ruined as the results of these raids and it is being profiled for catering to the Latino community," he writes in a press release.
According to Salinas, an ABC agent and San Francisco Police partner found minors on the premises three times this fall:
* On Sunday, October 18, the bar was cited for having a minor inside, who told the officers he was underage and had no identification. Salinas said the bar found a California driver's license of a similar looking person who was over 21 years old, and believes the person had thrown it on the floor when the police came up to him to avoid the repercussions of using a fake ID.
* On Saturday, November 14, the bar was again cited for having a minor inside after a patron was caught with a fake City College ID that indicated he was over 21.
* On Sunday, November 15, the same ABC agent and officer called for police backup, and some customers, including ones whose "physical appearance indicated that they were 30 years old or older," were ordered to stand against the wall outside the club, and eventually released. Apparently, patrons inside thought it was an Immigration raid, and some were "in tears," according to Salinas. The authorities found one person who used his 22-year-old brother's Mexican Consulate ID to get in and cited the bar for having a minor on the premises.
Salinas says the police officer told him that only California IDs are valid forms of ID to get into a bar. If so, the officer was incorrect. State law defines a valid ID as any issued by a federal, state, county or municipal government that includes a photo, name, date of birth, physical description, and is currently valid.
Salinas claims that security staff talked to the officer about the door policy, but the officer yelled at them to be quiet and threatened to take them to jail.
ABC spokesman John Carr confirmed the three citations, but declined to comment further on the case. He said that Club Caliente had no disciplinary history before this fall.
Salinas says the bar closed down early at 11 p.m. on Sunday November 15 -- the day after the large-scale ID checks by the authorities -- after no one showed up. The club usually draws 150 patrons on Sunday nights, he added.
"I feel that I am being treated differently," Salinas wrote in the release, "and that [the police officer] would not act in the same way at a club with a white...ownership and clientele, intimidating the service staff and putting all the customers against the outside wall of buildings to check on their age and/or proof of ID."
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/12/entertainment_commission_to_de.php
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
'Illegal alien' Halloween costume sparks ire
By Matt O'Brien
10/16/2009
Mercury News
WALNUT CREEK — Offended customers prompted Target on Friday to remove an "illegal alien" Halloween costume it was selling online.
"This is not in keeping with our brand," said Target spokesman Joshua Thomas, who said the costume designed by another vendor was never meant to be uploaded to Target.com, the retailer's online store.
The costume features an alien mask of the extraterrestrial kind and an orange jumpsuit with the words "illegal alien" emblazoned on the front. A green cardboard card, which says "green card," is an accessory with the $39.99 outfit.
"This was inadvertently uploaded to Target.com. It was never intended to be part of our original assortment," Thomas said Friday. "This costume was never seen in our review process."
He said executives learned about the item late on Thursday and immediately began to pull the item from its site, though that will not happen until later today or sometime tomorrow.
Several other companies also are selling the costume. It has upset some immigrant groups who say it further alienates people already subject to hatred.
Some were uncertain whether the costume was intended as insult or satire.
"I think it's a social commentary on the absurdity of calling undocumented workers illegal aliens," said Jorge-Mario Cabrera of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "Whether it's tasteful or not,
Advertisement
I think the consumers will have to decide."
The first person to review the costume on Target's Web site, a self-described professor from Chicago, was not impressed.
"The costume is a sick sign of the times we are living in this country where those who are not 'people like us' might as well be from another planet and are considered less than human," the anonymous customer wrote.
But other retailers selling the costume online said it was popular and clients across the country were ordering it.
"Look: It's just for fun," said Stephanie Lewis of Tarzana-based online retailer Halloween Costume World. "We sell pregnant nuns and all sorts of things. It's just like a joke, no one's trying to make fun of anyone."
The manufacturer, she said, was a company on the East Coast. Representatives of that company could not be reached for comment.
There are strong differences in opinion on the terms used for people who live in the United States without authorization. Most immigrant advocates consider "illegal alien" an offensive phrase. Although the word alien has been used in American law since the 18th century to describe a noncitizen — not necessarily one here illegally — the word took on new connotations in popular science fiction of the past century.
"I don't know if calling this creature an illegal alien helps or hinders dialogue," Cabrera said. He was going to ask Target to stop selling it before finding out it already had.
The costume is also not the only one that groups say are perpetuating stereotypes of immigrants this Halloween season.
Alejandro Martinez, a blogger who runs the Bordertown Blues site, was perusing a costume store near his Texas home when he saw an "illegal alien" costume he described as vile and unkempt. He photographed the mask, which mixed the exaggerated features of a space alien with the thick mustache of a stereotypical Mexican immigrant.
"I was offended because my family came to the U.S. illegally but ended up obtaining American citizenship," Martinez wrote in an e-mail Friday. "Costumes like these, I believe, are a mere step away from a Sambo mask to mock African Americans. Truly sad."
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13579313
10/16/2009
Mercury News
WALNUT CREEK — Offended customers prompted Target on Friday to remove an "illegal alien" Halloween costume it was selling online.
"This is not in keeping with our brand," said Target spokesman Joshua Thomas, who said the costume designed by another vendor was never meant to be uploaded to Target.com, the retailer's online store.
The costume features an alien mask of the extraterrestrial kind and an orange jumpsuit with the words "illegal alien" emblazoned on the front. A green cardboard card, which says "green card," is an accessory with the $39.99 outfit.
"This was inadvertently uploaded to Target.com. It was never intended to be part of our original assortment," Thomas said Friday. "This costume was never seen in our review process."
He said executives learned about the item late on Thursday and immediately began to pull the item from its site, though that will not happen until later today or sometime tomorrow.
Several other companies also are selling the costume. It has upset some immigrant groups who say it further alienates people already subject to hatred.
Some were uncertain whether the costume was intended as insult or satire.
"I think it's a social commentary on the absurdity of calling undocumented workers illegal aliens," said Jorge-Mario Cabrera of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "Whether it's tasteful or not,
Advertisement
I think the consumers will have to decide."
The first person to review the costume on Target's Web site, a self-described professor from Chicago, was not impressed.
"The costume is a sick sign of the times we are living in this country where those who are not 'people like us' might as well be from another planet and are considered less than human," the anonymous customer wrote.
But other retailers selling the costume online said it was popular and clients across the country were ordering it.
"Look: It's just for fun," said Stephanie Lewis of Tarzana-based online retailer Halloween Costume World. "We sell pregnant nuns and all sorts of things. It's just like a joke, no one's trying to make fun of anyone."
The manufacturer, she said, was a company on the East Coast. Representatives of that company could not be reached for comment.
There are strong differences in opinion on the terms used for people who live in the United States without authorization. Most immigrant advocates consider "illegal alien" an offensive phrase. Although the word alien has been used in American law since the 18th century to describe a noncitizen — not necessarily one here illegally — the word took on new connotations in popular science fiction of the past century.
"I don't know if calling this creature an illegal alien helps or hinders dialogue," Cabrera said. He was going to ask Target to stop selling it before finding out it already had.
The costume is also not the only one that groups say are perpetuating stereotypes of immigrants this Halloween season.
Alejandro Martinez, a blogger who runs the Bordertown Blues site, was perusing a costume store near his Texas home when he saw an "illegal alien" costume he described as vile and unkempt. He photographed the mask, which mixed the exaggerated features of a space alien with the thick mustache of a stereotypical Mexican immigrant.
"I was offended because my family came to the U.S. illegally but ended up obtaining American citizenship," Martinez wrote in an e-mail Friday. "Costumes like these, I believe, are a mere step away from a Sambo mask to mock African Americans. Truly sad."
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13579313
Monday, April 20, 2009
As Long as 'Latino' Is Synonymous With 'Immigrant,' We Will Remain a Class Apart
By Michelle Garcia and Julissa Reynoso
AlterNet
April 20, 2009
Here we go, once more, into the political battlefield that is "immigration reform."
As the respective armies assemble to hash out who deserves citizenship and at what cost, we question whether true citizenship can be won by Latinos, whether the citizenship of Latinos will transcend immigration status and reach the very heart of what it means to be an American.
In a recent installment of its "Remade in America" series on immigration, the New York Times sets its sights on Irving, Texas, a Dallas suburb, and its Mayor Herbert Gears, whose political survival has depended on the support of Latino voters and his yielding to the prevailing political winds regarding immigration by agreeing to run immigration-status checks on criminal suspects. To illustrate just how emotionally charged the immigration issue is in Irving, readers get this glimpse of recent events at a City Council meeting.
Gears asked a woman testifying about the public harm wrought by immigrants, crime, overcrowding, even disease: "Were you at a meeting, a club meeting, where applause was given to the comment that 'anyone who comes over the border should be shot?' "
"I don't remember if there was applause or not," she said, taken aback.
As a nation we have arrived at a time when to admit in public, before friends and neighbors, support for the use of lethal force on suspected border crossers raises nary an eyebrow.
This is all perfectly reasonable, goes the argument, because presumably we are speaking about illegal border crossers, folks who break the law.
But the article, reflecting current political discourse, lumps together immigrant and "Hispanic;" citizenship status, therefore, is rendered irrelevant.
But distinctions must be made. The focus on immigration obfuscates the very real way Latinos, U.S. citizens, are upsetting some folks by challenging the status quo.
Irving happens to be the site of a lawsuit filed in federal court, Benavidez v. Irving, challenging the at-large voting system that opponents say deprives Latinos of electoral representation, and has resulted in an all-white City Council and mayor governing Irving.
At-large systems allow voters to elect citywide representatives rather than pols representing a district. A similar voting model in Dallas was defeated in Dallas in courts.
The Irving situation illustrates a significant and enduring struggle for Latinos -- that of being a "class apart." Such was the argument by three Latino attorneys when they won a pivotal civil rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was 1954, and the case, Hernandez v. Texas, was brought before the high court to challenge the all-white juries that were pervasive in Texas and was rooted in the argument that although Latinos were "white," they were "a class apart." This civil rights milestone was recently examined in the PBS documentary, A Class Apart.
But now, some 50 years later, the argument that Latinos are a class apart still holds true, but not in the way the Texas attorneys intended.
Race alone is not the issue, but citizenship itself. Indeed, rigid racial binaries in this country obfuscate a glaring reality that endures for Latinos today that goes beyond race. In the eyes of the nation, in national discourse, Latinos of all races and backgrounds lack a true claim to national citizenship.
One only needs to read the news from New Jersey where immigration agents stormed the home of Dominicans to nab undocumented immigrants.
The "Dominicans" were actually U.S. citizens. One only needs to follow the string of anti-Latino attacks -- over 800 in one year -- to see that Latinos exist beyond the racial construct of this nation; and on that frontier our citizenship evaporates.
One only needs to follow the incidents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, most of whom are of Central American and Mexican descent, swept up in immigration raids from Long Island, N.Y., to Arizona.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/136929/as_long_as_'latino'_is_synonymous_with_'immigrant,'_we_will_remain_a_class_apart/
AlterNet
April 20, 2009
Here we go, once more, into the political battlefield that is "immigration reform."
As the respective armies assemble to hash out who deserves citizenship and at what cost, we question whether true citizenship can be won by Latinos, whether the citizenship of Latinos will transcend immigration status and reach the very heart of what it means to be an American.
In a recent installment of its "Remade in America" series on immigration, the New York Times sets its sights on Irving, Texas, a Dallas suburb, and its Mayor Herbert Gears, whose political survival has depended on the support of Latino voters and his yielding to the prevailing political winds regarding immigration by agreeing to run immigration-status checks on criminal suspects. To illustrate just how emotionally charged the immigration issue is in Irving, readers get this glimpse of recent events at a City Council meeting.
Gears asked a woman testifying about the public harm wrought by immigrants, crime, overcrowding, even disease: "Were you at a meeting, a club meeting, where applause was given to the comment that 'anyone who comes over the border should be shot?' "
"I don't remember if there was applause or not," she said, taken aback.
As a nation we have arrived at a time when to admit in public, before friends and neighbors, support for the use of lethal force on suspected border crossers raises nary an eyebrow.
This is all perfectly reasonable, goes the argument, because presumably we are speaking about illegal border crossers, folks who break the law.
But the article, reflecting current political discourse, lumps together immigrant and "Hispanic;" citizenship status, therefore, is rendered irrelevant.
But distinctions must be made. The focus on immigration obfuscates the very real way Latinos, U.S. citizens, are upsetting some folks by challenging the status quo.
Irving happens to be the site of a lawsuit filed in federal court, Benavidez v. Irving, challenging the at-large voting system that opponents say deprives Latinos of electoral representation, and has resulted in an all-white City Council and mayor governing Irving.
At-large systems allow voters to elect citywide representatives rather than pols representing a district. A similar voting model in Dallas was defeated in Dallas in courts.
The Irving situation illustrates a significant and enduring struggle for Latinos -- that of being a "class apart." Such was the argument by three Latino attorneys when they won a pivotal civil rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was 1954, and the case, Hernandez v. Texas, was brought before the high court to challenge the all-white juries that were pervasive in Texas and was rooted in the argument that although Latinos were "white," they were "a class apart." This civil rights milestone was recently examined in the PBS documentary, A Class Apart.
But now, some 50 years later, the argument that Latinos are a class apart still holds true, but not in the way the Texas attorneys intended.
Race alone is not the issue, but citizenship itself. Indeed, rigid racial binaries in this country obfuscate a glaring reality that endures for Latinos today that goes beyond race. In the eyes of the nation, in national discourse, Latinos of all races and backgrounds lack a true claim to national citizenship.
One only needs to read the news from New Jersey where immigration agents stormed the home of Dominicans to nab undocumented immigrants.
The "Dominicans" were actually U.S. citizens. One only needs to follow the string of anti-Latino attacks -- over 800 in one year -- to see that Latinos exist beyond the racial construct of this nation; and on that frontier our citizenship evaporates.
One only needs to follow the incidents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, most of whom are of Central American and Mexican descent, swept up in immigration raids from Long Island, N.Y., to Arizona.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/136929/as_long_as_'latino'_is_synonymous_with_'immigrant,'_we_will_remain_a_class_apart/
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Latinos face a rising tide of hostility
Latinos face a rising tide of hostility
by Jessica Chandler
Socialist Worker Online
March 3, 2009
Immigrant Latinos in the US are facing a tough and worrying future.
There is a rising tide of hostility along the US-Mexico border. Visa and immigration policies are breaking up families, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is increasingly raiding businesses and manufacturing plants to detain immigrants.
This latest shift represents the increasing criminalisation of immigration. It is a backward step in Latino immigrants’ battle to win legitimacy and come “out of the shadows”.
Government policies such as Operation Streamline bring low-level criminal charges against virtually all migrants caught crossing parts of the border.
A Pew Research Centre report has said that a sharp rise in Latino prisoners mean they are now the largest ethnic population in federal prisons.
The study reveals that nearly half of the Latino offenders, about 48 percent, were convicted of “immigration crimes”.
Many of the Latinos convicted were sentenced in courts from one of the four states that border Mexico.
There has been another major disappointment for the Latino community with the collapse of government talks to overhaul the US’s immigration policy.
Republicans voted down a plan in June 2007 that would have included a “guest worker programme” and a way for workers with “clean” records to gain US citizenship.
Since then any significant progress has stalled. President Barack Obama is unlikely to start working on immigration policies while he faces major issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the failing economy.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be for the 11 million people living illegally in the US – 57 percent of them from Mexico.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants struck and took to the streets across the US in May 2006 to fight for their rights.
The strike had the slogan, “A day without immigrants”, and it showed the political clout of the Latino population.
George Bush said that his biggest regret when he left office was his failure to pass a comprehensive plan to effectively deal with illegal people working and living in the US.
In 2003, Bush set out to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, which had not been changed since the mid-1980s.
Jobs
His proposal focused on creating a programme that would allow immigrants to legally enter the country for a temporary period of three years to take jobs that employers say would otherwise go unfilled.
Another proposed major step forward for immigrants was the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (Dream) Act, which was not endorsed by Bush.
This would have allowed undocumented young immigrants to get financial aid and scholarships for college. They would also have legal status while they were at college. But the Senate narrowly voted this down.
Bush’s proposal for immigration reform went before the House of Representatives in 2005.
But the “war on terror”, and growing mistrust of foreigners had changed the situation.
The Republican majority rejected the reform bill in December of that year. They instead called for the deportation of all illegal immigrants, as well as insisting on a making it a felony for anyone to give assistance, including medical aid, to illegal immigrants.
It was this turn of events that prompted Latino organisations and labour groups to stage the large demonstrations.
When the Democrats gained a slight majority in the house in 2007 the issue was revisited.
Senators took up the call for the guest worker programme and to find a way for illegal immigrants to gain legalised status. This was once again defeated by the right.
This has left the Latino community with little possibility of a fair and just immigration reform plan that would provide them with the means to take care of their families.
Latinos are left to deal with the effects of a country battling deep recession, the Minutemen vigilantes and the ICE raids.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17254
by Jessica Chandler
Socialist Worker Online
March 3, 2009
Immigrant Latinos in the US are facing a tough and worrying future.
There is a rising tide of hostility along the US-Mexico border. Visa and immigration policies are breaking up families, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is increasingly raiding businesses and manufacturing plants to detain immigrants.
This latest shift represents the increasing criminalisation of immigration. It is a backward step in Latino immigrants’ battle to win legitimacy and come “out of the shadows”.
Government policies such as Operation Streamline bring low-level criminal charges against virtually all migrants caught crossing parts of the border.
A Pew Research Centre report has said that a sharp rise in Latino prisoners mean they are now the largest ethnic population in federal prisons.
The study reveals that nearly half of the Latino offenders, about 48 percent, were convicted of “immigration crimes”.
Many of the Latinos convicted were sentenced in courts from one of the four states that border Mexico.
There has been another major disappointment for the Latino community with the collapse of government talks to overhaul the US’s immigration policy.
Republicans voted down a plan in June 2007 that would have included a “guest worker programme” and a way for workers with “clean” records to gain US citizenship.
Since then any significant progress has stalled. President Barack Obama is unlikely to start working on immigration policies while he faces major issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the failing economy.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be for the 11 million people living illegally in the US – 57 percent of them from Mexico.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants struck and took to the streets across the US in May 2006 to fight for their rights.
The strike had the slogan, “A day without immigrants”, and it showed the political clout of the Latino population.
George Bush said that his biggest regret when he left office was his failure to pass a comprehensive plan to effectively deal with illegal people working and living in the US.
In 2003, Bush set out to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, which had not been changed since the mid-1980s.
Jobs
His proposal focused on creating a programme that would allow immigrants to legally enter the country for a temporary period of three years to take jobs that employers say would otherwise go unfilled.
Another proposed major step forward for immigrants was the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (Dream) Act, which was not endorsed by Bush.
This would have allowed undocumented young immigrants to get financial aid and scholarships for college. They would also have legal status while they were at college. But the Senate narrowly voted this down.
Bush’s proposal for immigration reform went before the House of Representatives in 2005.
But the “war on terror”, and growing mistrust of foreigners had changed the situation.
The Republican majority rejected the reform bill in December of that year. They instead called for the deportation of all illegal immigrants, as well as insisting on a making it a felony for anyone to give assistance, including medical aid, to illegal immigrants.
It was this turn of events that prompted Latino organisations and labour groups to stage the large demonstrations.
When the Democrats gained a slight majority in the house in 2007 the issue was revisited.
Senators took up the call for the guest worker programme and to find a way for illegal immigrants to gain legalised status. This was once again defeated by the right.
This has left the Latino community with little possibility of a fair and just immigration reform plan that would provide them with the means to take care of their families.
Latinos are left to deal with the effects of a country battling deep recession, the Minutemen vigilantes and the ICE raids.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17254
Friday, February 27, 2009
U.S. Immigration Policies Bring Global Shame on Us
U.S. Immigration Policies Bring Global Shame on Us
Roberto Lovato
The Huffington Post
February 26, 2009
As one of the five full-time media relations specialists working for Maricopa County Sheriff and reality TV star Joe Arpaio -- "America's Toughest Sheriff" -- Detective Aaron Douglas deals with the world's media more than most. Though he is a local official, his is often the first voice heard by many of the foreign correspondents covering immigration in the United States.
"We talk to media from literally all over world: New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Mexico, Chinese and other parts of the Orient," Douglas drawled in a Southern accent. "We just did a series with a TV station from Mexico City about the isolation of illegal immigrants and why we're putting them in a tent." He was referring to a controversial march reported and discussed widely by international media and bloggers last week.
Alongside reports on Pres. Barack Obama's announcement in Phoenix last week of his plan to revive the American Dream by fixing the U.S. housing crisis that led to the global economic crisis, millions of viewers, listeners and readers around the world also got stories reminiscent of the American nightmare Obama was elected to overcome, Guantanamo. "Immigrant Prisoners Humiliated in Arizona," was the title of a story in Spain's Onda Cero radio show; "Arpaio for South African President," declared a blogger in that country; an op-ed in Mexico's Cambio newspaper denounced "the inhuman, discriminatory and criminal treatment of immigrants by Arizona's radical, anti-immigrant Sheriff, Joe Arpaio." Stories of this week's massive protest of Arapaio will likely be seen and heard alongside reports of Obama's speech to Congress in media all over the world, as well.
The proliferation of stories in international media and in global forums about the Guantanamo-like problems in the country's immigrant detention system -- death, abuse and neglect at the hands of detention facility guards; prolonged and indefinite detention of immigrants (including children and families) denied habeas corpus and other fundamental rights; filthy, overcrowded and extremely unhealthy facilities; denial of basic health services -- are again tarnishing the U.S. image abroad, according to several experts. As a result, reports from Arizona and immigrant detention facilities have created a unique problem: they are making it increasingly difficult for Obama to persuade the planet's people that the United States is ready claim exceptional leadership on human rights in a soon-to-be-post-Guantanamo world.
Consider the case of Mexico. Just last week, following news reports from Arizona, the Mexican government, which is traditionally silent or very tepid in its criticism of U.S. immigration and other policies, issued a statement in which it "energetically protested the undignified way in which the Mexicans were transferred to 'Tent City'" in Maricopa County.
David Brooks, U.S correspondent for Mexico's La Jornada newspaper, believes that immigrant detention stories hit Mexicans closer to home because those reportedly being abused in detention are not from a far off country; they are family, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens. In the same way that Guantanamo erased the idea of U.S. leadership in human rights in the Bush era, says Brooks, who was born in Mexico, practices in immigrant detention facilities like those reported by global media in Maricopa County may begin to do so in the Obama era if something does not change. "Mexicans have never seen the U.S. as a great model for promotion of human rights. But with Obama we take him at his word. We're expecting some change," said Brooks. "But that will not last long if we see him continuing Bush's [immigration] policies: raids, increasing detention, deportation. Regardless of his excuse, he will quickly become mas de lo mismo (more of the same) in terms of the experience down south." If uncontested, the expression of such sentiments far beyond Mexico and Mexican immigrants could lead to the kind of American exceptionalism Obama doesn't want.
In a March 2008 report, Jorge Bustamante, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants, concluded that "the United States has failed to adhere to its international obligations to make the human rights of the 37.5 million migrants living in the country a national priority, using a comprehensive and coordinated national policy based on clear international obligations." Asked how his report was received in different countries, Bustamante said, "The non-governmental organizations have really responded. In the United States and outside the United States- in Mexico, in Guatemala, in Indonesia and other countries -- NGO's are using my report to frame their concerns and demands in their own countries -- and to raise criticism about the United States."
For her part, Alison Parker, deputy director of the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch, fears a global government "race to the bottom" around immigrant detention policies. "My concern is that as the rest of world sees the United States practices, we increase the risk that this will give the green light to other governments to be just as abusive or more abusive as the United States."
If there is a positive note to be heard in the growing global chorus of critique of and concern about U.S immigration policy, it is to be found among those human rights activists and groups doing what W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson and other civil rights activists did in previous eras: bring their issues to the global stage. Government documents from the civil rights era, documents that were released just a few years ago, illustrate how members of the Kennedy and Johnson State departments and even Kennedy and Johnson themselves were acutely aware of and sensitive to how denunciations in global forums of racial discrimination in United States had a devastating impact on the U.S. prestige abroad.
Such a situation around the rights of migrants today, says Oscar Chacon of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, a Chicago-based global NGO run by and for immigrants, creates an opportunity out of the globalization of the images of both Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Barack Obama. "The world will be able to see him as the rogue sheriff that he is" said Chacon, who was in Mexico City attending a conference on immigration at which U.S. detention practices were criticized. "And it will be up to the Obama administration to show the world that Arpaio is not a symbol of the rest of the country when it comes to immigration."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberto-lovato/us-immigration-policies-b_b_170309.html
Roberto Lovato
The Huffington Post
February 26, 2009
As one of the five full-time media relations specialists working for Maricopa County Sheriff and reality TV star Joe Arpaio -- "America's Toughest Sheriff" -- Detective Aaron Douglas deals with the world's media more than most. Though he is a local official, his is often the first voice heard by many of the foreign correspondents covering immigration in the United States.
"We talk to media from literally all over world: New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Mexico, Chinese and other parts of the Orient," Douglas drawled in a Southern accent. "We just did a series with a TV station from Mexico City about the isolation of illegal immigrants and why we're putting them in a tent." He was referring to a controversial march reported and discussed widely by international media and bloggers last week.
Alongside reports on Pres. Barack Obama's announcement in Phoenix last week of his plan to revive the American Dream by fixing the U.S. housing crisis that led to the global economic crisis, millions of viewers, listeners and readers around the world also got stories reminiscent of the American nightmare Obama was elected to overcome, Guantanamo. "Immigrant Prisoners Humiliated in Arizona," was the title of a story in Spain's Onda Cero radio show; "Arpaio for South African President," declared a blogger in that country; an op-ed in Mexico's Cambio newspaper denounced "the inhuman, discriminatory and criminal treatment of immigrants by Arizona's radical, anti-immigrant Sheriff, Joe Arpaio." Stories of this week's massive protest of Arapaio will likely be seen and heard alongside reports of Obama's speech to Congress in media all over the world, as well.
The proliferation of stories in international media and in global forums about the Guantanamo-like problems in the country's immigrant detention system -- death, abuse and neglect at the hands of detention facility guards; prolonged and indefinite detention of immigrants (including children and families) denied habeas corpus and other fundamental rights; filthy, overcrowded and extremely unhealthy facilities; denial of basic health services -- are again tarnishing the U.S. image abroad, according to several experts. As a result, reports from Arizona and immigrant detention facilities have created a unique problem: they are making it increasingly difficult for Obama to persuade the planet's people that the United States is ready claim exceptional leadership on human rights in a soon-to-be-post-Guantanamo world.
Consider the case of Mexico. Just last week, following news reports from Arizona, the Mexican government, which is traditionally silent or very tepid in its criticism of U.S. immigration and other policies, issued a statement in which it "energetically protested the undignified way in which the Mexicans were transferred to 'Tent City'" in Maricopa County.
David Brooks, U.S correspondent for Mexico's La Jornada newspaper, believes that immigrant detention stories hit Mexicans closer to home because those reportedly being abused in detention are not from a far off country; they are family, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens. In the same way that Guantanamo erased the idea of U.S. leadership in human rights in the Bush era, says Brooks, who was born in Mexico, practices in immigrant detention facilities like those reported by global media in Maricopa County may begin to do so in the Obama era if something does not change. "Mexicans have never seen the U.S. as a great model for promotion of human rights. But with Obama we take him at his word. We're expecting some change," said Brooks. "But that will not last long if we see him continuing Bush's [immigration] policies: raids, increasing detention, deportation. Regardless of his excuse, he will quickly become mas de lo mismo (more of the same) in terms of the experience down south." If uncontested, the expression of such sentiments far beyond Mexico and Mexican immigrants could lead to the kind of American exceptionalism Obama doesn't want.
In a March 2008 report, Jorge Bustamante, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants, concluded that "the United States has failed to adhere to its international obligations to make the human rights of the 37.5 million migrants living in the country a national priority, using a comprehensive and coordinated national policy based on clear international obligations." Asked how his report was received in different countries, Bustamante said, "The non-governmental organizations have really responded. In the United States and outside the United States- in Mexico, in Guatemala, in Indonesia and other countries -- NGO's are using my report to frame their concerns and demands in their own countries -- and to raise criticism about the United States."
For her part, Alison Parker, deputy director of the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch, fears a global government "race to the bottom" around immigrant detention policies. "My concern is that as the rest of world sees the United States practices, we increase the risk that this will give the green light to other governments to be just as abusive or more abusive as the United States."
If there is a positive note to be heard in the growing global chorus of critique of and concern about U.S immigration policy, it is to be found among those human rights activists and groups doing what W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson and other civil rights activists did in previous eras: bring their issues to the global stage. Government documents from the civil rights era, documents that were released just a few years ago, illustrate how members of the Kennedy and Johnson State departments and even Kennedy and Johnson themselves were acutely aware of and sensitive to how denunciations in global forums of racial discrimination in United States had a devastating impact on the U.S. prestige abroad.
Such a situation around the rights of migrants today, says Oscar Chacon of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, a Chicago-based global NGO run by and for immigrants, creates an opportunity out of the globalization of the images of both Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Barack Obama. "The world will be able to see him as the rogue sheriff that he is" said Chacon, who was in Mexico City attending a conference on immigration at which U.S. detention practices were criticized. "And it will be up to the Obama administration to show the world that Arpaio is not a symbol of the rest of the country when it comes to immigration."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberto-lovato/us-immigration-policies-b_b_170309.html
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Agents felt pressure to arrest illegal immigrants, ICE report says
Agents felt pressure to arrest illegal immigrants, ICE report says
24 Latinos were arrested at Baltimore 7-Eleven raid
By Scott Calvert scott.calvert@baltsun.com
baltimoresun.com, February 18, 2009
The federal agents who arrested 24 Latinos during a 2007 raid at a Southeast Baltimore 7-Eleven felt pressure from supervisors to round up possible illegal immigrants to "produce statistics," according to an internal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement report.
The report appeared to contradict previous statements by ICE that the agents were taking a coffee break Jan. 23, 2007, when they were approached by Latino laborers outside the South Broadway store, a popular hiring spot.
Immigrant advocates released the report this morning and said it revealed further evidence of a "broken" immigration system that unfairly targeted Latinos who were not guilty of any crimes.
CASA de Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group, obtained the report under a public records request. CASA and several other groups are requesting an urgent meeting with Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Homeland Security Department, to discuss their concerns.
"We need just and humane immigration reform," said Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA, during a news conference at the group's office in Hyattsville. "We need to stop the raids immediately."
The ICE report denies accusations by CASA that the agents violated the civil rights of the 24 men picked up in the raid, calling those allegations "unsubstantiated." It also says evidence "did not support the allegation" that the men were targeted based on race or ethnicity, as CASA contends based on witness accounts and video footage of the raid.
But the report does state that the raid did not spontaneously occur after agents pulled into the 7-Eleven to rest and get coffee.
"The evidence revealed that the Fugitive Operations officers were ordered to seek additional arrests that day due to managerial pressure to produce statistics for Operation Return to Sender," it says.
"The evidence supports that the 7-Eleven store was visited at the suggestion of one of the deportation officers" while agents were traveling to another "targeted location" in Baltimore.
"It's a perfect example of the crisis that our broken immigration system presents in which ICE acts with impunity," said Michelle Mendez, a lawyer who represents some of the men who were detained. Referring to agents, she said, "They had a vision in mind which was prompted by ICE policies."
Of the 24 men who were arrested, one proved his legal status, said another attorney, Justin Cox, and four others have pending immigration cases. The remaining 19 were either deported or left the country voluntarily, Cox said, though only "two or three" had deportation orders and were therefore deemed "fugitives" by ICE.
Today's news conference comes three weeks after CASA released 7-Eleven surveillance video that immigration advocates said shows federal agents unfairly targeting Latinos during the raid.
In the video, agents can be seen ignoring black store patrons while focusing on Latino men. Advocates say a white man who had hired Latinos for day labor was allowed to drive his pickup truck away from the 7-Eleven, while the workers were taken into custody. In addition, the advocates say, the video shows agents detaining a number of Latinos who had been waiting at a bus stop across the street.
CASA says it received the ICE internal report Feb. 3.
www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-casa0218,0,2348053.story
24 Latinos were arrested at Baltimore 7-Eleven raid
By Scott Calvert scott.calvert@baltsun.com
baltimoresun.com, February 18, 2009
The federal agents who arrested 24 Latinos during a 2007 raid at a Southeast Baltimore 7-Eleven felt pressure from supervisors to round up possible illegal immigrants to "produce statistics," according to an internal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement report.
The report appeared to contradict previous statements by ICE that the agents were taking a coffee break Jan. 23, 2007, when they were approached by Latino laborers outside the South Broadway store, a popular hiring spot.
Immigrant advocates released the report this morning and said it revealed further evidence of a "broken" immigration system that unfairly targeted Latinos who were not guilty of any crimes.
CASA de Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group, obtained the report under a public records request. CASA and several other groups are requesting an urgent meeting with Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Homeland Security Department, to discuss their concerns.
"We need just and humane immigration reform," said Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA, during a news conference at the group's office in Hyattsville. "We need to stop the raids immediately."
The ICE report denies accusations by CASA that the agents violated the civil rights of the 24 men picked up in the raid, calling those allegations "unsubstantiated." It also says evidence "did not support the allegation" that the men were targeted based on race or ethnicity, as CASA contends based on witness accounts and video footage of the raid.
But the report does state that the raid did not spontaneously occur after agents pulled into the 7-Eleven to rest and get coffee.
"The evidence revealed that the Fugitive Operations officers were ordered to seek additional arrests that day due to managerial pressure to produce statistics for Operation Return to Sender," it says.
"The evidence supports that the 7-Eleven store was visited at the suggestion of one of the deportation officers" while agents were traveling to another "targeted location" in Baltimore.
"It's a perfect example of the crisis that our broken immigration system presents in which ICE acts with impunity," said Michelle Mendez, a lawyer who represents some of the men who were detained. Referring to agents, she said, "They had a vision in mind which was prompted by ICE policies."
Of the 24 men who were arrested, one proved his legal status, said another attorney, Justin Cox, and four others have pending immigration cases. The remaining 19 were either deported or left the country voluntarily, Cox said, though only "two or three" had deportation orders and were therefore deemed "fugitives" by ICE.
Today's news conference comes three weeks after CASA released 7-Eleven surveillance video that immigration advocates said shows federal agents unfairly targeting Latinos during the raid.
In the video, agents can be seen ignoring black store patrons while focusing on Latino men. Advocates say a white man who had hired Latinos for day labor was allowed to drive his pickup truck away from the 7-Eleven, while the workers were taken into custody. In addition, the advocates say, the video shows agents detaining a number of Latinos who had been waiting at a bus stop across the street.
CASA says it received the ICE internal report Feb. 3.
www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-casa0218,0,2348053.story
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Conflicting Accounts of an ICE Raid in Maryland
Conflicting Accounts of an ICE Raid in Maryland
Officers Portray Detention of 24 Latinos Differently in Internal Probe and in Court
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2009; A01
The boss was not happy. His elite team of immigration officers had been raiding targets across Prince George's and Montgomery counties all night long in search of fugitive and criminal immigrants but had netted only a handful.
As the unit regrouped in its Baltimore office that frigid January morning two years ago, the supervisor warned members that they were well behind a Washington-mandated annual quota of 1,000 arrests per team and ordered them back out to boost their tally.
"I don't care where you get more arrests, we need more numbers," he said, according to one account in a summary of an internal investigation. The boss then added that the agents could go to any street corner and find a group of illegal immigrants, according to the summary, not previously made public.
About an hour later, the nine-person team went to a nearby 7-Eleven and arrested 24 Latino men. But most of the detainees were hardly the threats to the United States that the team was designed to focus on.
The officers were part of a special unit that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals who are "fugitive aliens," meaning they have evaded a deportation order. And although many of the 24 Latinos detained at the 7-Eleven were found to have been in the country illegally, 14 were not fugitive immigrants. One, Ernesto Guillen, was merely stopping for coffee on his way to join his wife at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where their 4-year-old son was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia.
The Jan. 23, 2007, incident, described in ICE documents and shown in security camera footage obtained by The Washington Post, offers a glimpse into how Washington's directives on arrest targets might have spurred officers in the field to stray from their mission and stage a random sweep for illegal immigrants, possibly in violation of ICE's stated practice.
Even as ICE's National Fugitive Operations Program has garnered more than $625 million from Congress since its launch in 2003, critics have long suspected that Washington's practice of setting goals for apprehensions has led teams to bring in tens of thousands of immigrants who have not evaded a deportation order or committed a crime -- as opposed to being in the country unlawfully, which is a civil violation.
Recently, researchers from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and the Migration Policy Institute in Washington released a report revealing a dramatic leap in arrests of immigrants who were neither fugitives nor criminals in 2006 and 2007 after officers were permitted to count non-fugitives toward their goal if such detainees were encountered in the course of an operation.
When a reporter contacted ICE for this article, spokeswoman Kelly A. Nantel disclosed that as of Feb. 4, ICE leadership had altered the annual goal of 1,000 arrests for each team. Instead, each team must now identify and target -- though not necessarily arrest -- 50 fugitives each month, as well as 500 a year as part of operations with other teams.
Nantel cited new statistics showing that in the 2008 fiscal year, the share of non-fugitive arrests by the teams dropped -- from 40 percent to 24 percent of arrests nationwide and to 6 percent of those made by the Baltimore team. Meanwhile, the new secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, has requested a review of fugitive operations.
Yet the aftermath of the 7-Eleven incident points to potential difficulties in changing ICE's institutional culture.
The initial account given by the agency, and supported in sworn declarations later made by some of the officers involved, was that the team had stopped at the 7-Eleven for a break when a group of Latino men approached, looking for day labor work. The officers said the men, when asked, voluntarily admitted to being in the country illegally, thus providing lawful grounds for their arrest.
But some of the officers and their colleagues later gave ICE investigators a different account. They described how, after their supervisor had instructed them to boost arrest numbers by arresting non-fugitives if necessary, they had stopped at the 7-Eleven for the express purpose of checking it for illegal immigrants. Moreover, security camera footage appears to show that at least eight of the Latino men arrested had no previous visible contact with the officers before they were detained.
The agency's internal probe -- launched at the request of Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) -- was limited to the question of whether the officers had engaged in improper racial profiling and concluded on Oct. 9, 2007, that they had not. ICE has continued to stand by the initial declarations provided by its officers, submitting them in the detainee's deportation appeals as recently as Jan. 14.
Shortly after The Post contacted ICE about the incident, spokeswoman Nantel said Acting Assistant Secretary John P. Torres immediately asked the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general to investigate whether the officers' statements were inconsistent. The inspector general has not formally received the request. Nantel said Torres did not seek a further probe into the actions of the team's bosses.
"There's no conclusion in [the internal investigation report] that would indicate whether or not the supervisor gave any direction that they should go out and conduct random arrests," Nantel said. "There are accounts that say he did, and accounts that say he didn't."
Justin Cox, an attorney with CASA of Maryland, an immigrant rights group representing some of the detained men in both a civil claim and in immigration court, said ICE's response has been inadequate.
"Changing the arrest quotas alone is not going to make ICE more transparent or accountable," Cox said. "The officer on the street really has to be completely on board with the mission of the agency, because they have so much discretion to do whatever they want in situations where no one will ever really find out what happened." Only the security cameras and the discovery of ICE's internal documents, he said, made this situation different.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/02/17/ST2009021703780.html
Officers Portray Detention of 24 Latinos Differently in Internal Probe and in Court
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2009; A01
The boss was not happy. His elite team of immigration officers had been raiding targets across Prince George's and Montgomery counties all night long in search of fugitive and criminal immigrants but had netted only a handful.
As the unit regrouped in its Baltimore office that frigid January morning two years ago, the supervisor warned members that they were well behind a Washington-mandated annual quota of 1,000 arrests per team and ordered them back out to boost their tally.
"I don't care where you get more arrests, we need more numbers," he said, according to one account in a summary of an internal investigation. The boss then added that the agents could go to any street corner and find a group of illegal immigrants, according to the summary, not previously made public.
About an hour later, the nine-person team went to a nearby 7-Eleven and arrested 24 Latino men. But most of the detainees were hardly the threats to the United States that the team was designed to focus on.
The officers were part of a special unit that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals who are "fugitive aliens," meaning they have evaded a deportation order. And although many of the 24 Latinos detained at the 7-Eleven were found to have been in the country illegally, 14 were not fugitive immigrants. One, Ernesto Guillen, was merely stopping for coffee on his way to join his wife at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where their 4-year-old son was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia.
The Jan. 23, 2007, incident, described in ICE documents and shown in security camera footage obtained by The Washington Post, offers a glimpse into how Washington's directives on arrest targets might have spurred officers in the field to stray from their mission and stage a random sweep for illegal immigrants, possibly in violation of ICE's stated practice.
Even as ICE's National Fugitive Operations Program has garnered more than $625 million from Congress since its launch in 2003, critics have long suspected that Washington's practice of setting goals for apprehensions has led teams to bring in tens of thousands of immigrants who have not evaded a deportation order or committed a crime -- as opposed to being in the country unlawfully, which is a civil violation.
Recently, researchers from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and the Migration Policy Institute in Washington released a report revealing a dramatic leap in arrests of immigrants who were neither fugitives nor criminals in 2006 and 2007 after officers were permitted to count non-fugitives toward their goal if such detainees were encountered in the course of an operation.
When a reporter contacted ICE for this article, spokeswoman Kelly A. Nantel disclosed that as of Feb. 4, ICE leadership had altered the annual goal of 1,000 arrests for each team. Instead, each team must now identify and target -- though not necessarily arrest -- 50 fugitives each month, as well as 500 a year as part of operations with other teams.
Nantel cited new statistics showing that in the 2008 fiscal year, the share of non-fugitive arrests by the teams dropped -- from 40 percent to 24 percent of arrests nationwide and to 6 percent of those made by the Baltimore team. Meanwhile, the new secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, has requested a review of fugitive operations.
Yet the aftermath of the 7-Eleven incident points to potential difficulties in changing ICE's institutional culture.
The initial account given by the agency, and supported in sworn declarations later made by some of the officers involved, was that the team had stopped at the 7-Eleven for a break when a group of Latino men approached, looking for day labor work. The officers said the men, when asked, voluntarily admitted to being in the country illegally, thus providing lawful grounds for their arrest.
But some of the officers and their colleagues later gave ICE investigators a different account. They described how, after their supervisor had instructed them to boost arrest numbers by arresting non-fugitives if necessary, they had stopped at the 7-Eleven for the express purpose of checking it for illegal immigrants. Moreover, security camera footage appears to show that at least eight of the Latino men arrested had no previous visible contact with the officers before they were detained.
The agency's internal probe -- launched at the request of Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) -- was limited to the question of whether the officers had engaged in improper racial profiling and concluded on Oct. 9, 2007, that they had not. ICE has continued to stand by the initial declarations provided by its officers, submitting them in the detainee's deportation appeals as recently as Jan. 14.
Shortly after The Post contacted ICE about the incident, spokeswoman Nantel said Acting Assistant Secretary John P. Torres immediately asked the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general to investigate whether the officers' statements were inconsistent. The inspector general has not formally received the request. Nantel said Torres did not seek a further probe into the actions of the team's bosses.
"There's no conclusion in [the internal investigation report] that would indicate whether or not the supervisor gave any direction that they should go out and conduct random arrests," Nantel said. "There are accounts that say he did, and accounts that say he didn't."
Justin Cox, an attorney with CASA of Maryland, an immigrant rights group representing some of the detained men in both a civil claim and in immigration court, said ICE's response has been inadequate.
"Changing the arrest quotas alone is not going to make ICE more transparent or accountable," Cox said. "The officer on the street really has to be completely on board with the mission of the agency, because they have so much discretion to do whatever they want in situations where no one will ever really find out what happened." Only the security cameras and the discovery of ICE's internal documents, he said, made this situation different.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/02/17/ST2009021703780.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)