By Albor Ruiz
The New York Daily News
July 23rd 2009
Heavily armed men in uniforms, breaking into private homes before dawn, seizing people without probable cause.
This has become the routine behavior of immigration agents during raids - without warrants or other authorization - on the homes of the undocumented, says a new report released Wednesday.
"Constitution on ICE: A Report on Immigration Home Raid Operations" was conducted by the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. The study found that it is not uncommon for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to seize residents without legal basis.
This practice, which smacks of racial profiling, is not new. Many people have known about it for a long time. But the study makes clear that it is more widespread than anybody suspected.
"This report reveals an alarming pattern of federal immigration officials breaking into people's homes and bedrooms in the predawn hours in flagrant violation of the Constitution," said Peter Markowitz, the Immigration Justice Clinic director and co-author of the report.
One has to wonder if those who keep repeating, "We are a country of laws" in order to demand the harshest possible treatment for undocumented immigrants will now ask with similar fervor for ICE home raids to cease in the name of the Constitution.
Imagine the terror of children and parents who wake up at dawn to find their homes invaded by seven-person teams of armed ICE agents. The display of force is such that one would think agents were about to confront dangerous terrorists, not detain poor, powerless immigrants.
"When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn't working, and we need to change it," then-candidate Barack Obama eloquently told the National Council of La Raza last July during his presidential run.
He was right, of course. The system is indeed broken and in need of repair. Scrapping the raids would be a great first step.
Although the ICE home raids are intended to target dangerous criminals, as many as two-thirds of those arrested are civil immigration violators who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the report found.
Similar results have been found with the 287(g) program that turns local police into surrogate immigration agents. Although 287(g) is under intense scrutiny for blatant racial profiling and human rights violations, Washington, inexplicably, is expanding it.
The study also reveals that there is "a pattern of ICE agents physically pushing and breaking their way into private homes in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution."
"There is an established pattern of misconduct by ICE agents in the New York and New Jersey Field Offices," the report concludes. It may very well be a national problem, the study says.
In its response to the report, ICE said in a statement, "We do our job professionally and humanely," adding that the agency recognizes the impact its actions have on people.
Jaya Vasandani, a co-author of the report, points out what may be the crux of the problem.
"If the government were engaged in these types of systematic and widespread constitutional violations toward any other group in society, there would be a national outcry," Vasandani said. "Because these abuses have targeted the most vulnerable segments of our population they have gone largely unnoticed."
Ours is a country of laws. Where is the outrage?
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2009/07/23/2009-07-23_study_shows_immigration_and_customs_enforcement_raids_leave_dissenters_cold.html
