Investigation into 287G should help Benita Veliz

Information on Hearing and links to testimonies

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House Hearing Will Examine Illegal Profiling and Police Misconduct By Local Law Enforcement Acting As Federal Immigration Agents (4/1/2009)

U.S. Department Of Homeland Security Should Suspend Agreements With Local And State Law Enforcement, Says ACLU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – Two House Judiciary Committee Subcommittees will hold a joint hearing tomorrow to examine civil rights abuses committed by state and local police functioning as federal immigration agents. As part of the hearing entitled, “The Public Safety and Civil Rights Implications of State and Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws,” the American Civil Liberties Union in written testimony will urge Congress to suspend all local immigration enforcement agreements that have resulted in illegal profiling of Latinos and unlawful detention and deportation of U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

“Too many sheriffs, after being deputized as immigration agents, have treated their new authority as a license to profile and discriminate,” said Joanne Lin, ACLU Legislative Counsel. “The ACLU has received complaints across the country of U.S. citizens of Latino appearance being illegally stopped, detained, arrested, and even deported by local law enforcement functioning as immigration agents. Immigration law, like tax law, is very complex and constantly evolving. Since immigration law is exclusively federal, immigration enforcement belongs in the hands of the federal government only, not in the hands of county sheriff’s deputies and police officers.”

Since 2002, the federal government has actively shifted enforcement of civil immigration law to localities. State, county and local law enforcement agencies enter into agreements under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, in which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorizes local law enforcement officers to perform immigration duties under the training and supervision of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Unfortunately, the federal government has completely abandoned its responsibilities to monitor and provide meaningful oversight of the 287(g) program. Consequently, sheriffs and police officers who, for example, are not adequately trained or supervised by ICE often rely on race or ethnicity as reason to suspect that an individual is undocumented. Any person who looks or sounds “foreign” is more likely to be stopped by police and more likely to be arrested, rather than given a warning or let go, when stopped.

One such individual is Julio Mora, a U.S. citizen who was stopped and arrested by Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (“MCSO”) deputies in February. Despite being a U.S. citizen, Mr. Mora was arrested and detained for several hours without reasonable suspicion or probable cause until MCSO could confirm his citizenship. While in MCSO custody, Mr. Mora was humiliated by deputies who forced him to urinate with his hands cuffed and then mocked him for not being able to do so. Mr. Mora will be testifying at the hearing about his experiences at the hands of MCSO deputies.

The ACLU, along with Steptoe & Johnson LLP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, has sued MCSO for illegal profiling of Latino motorists in Maricopa County. In February, a federal court ruled that the class action lawsuit against MCSO will proceed.

“Discriminatory practices and policies in local enforcement of immigration law have no place in this country and must be stopped,” said ACLU staff attorney Mónica Ramírez, who is co-counsel in the case and co-authored the ACLU’s written testimony. “We urge Congress to take steps to make it unnecessary to bring further litigation on behalf of Latinos who have been illegally profiled and harassed by local law enforcement for the purpose of enforcing the immigration laws.”

In February, the ACLU of North Carolina co-authored a report entitled, “The Policies and Politics of Local Immigration Enforcement Laws: 287(g) Program in North Carolina.” Katy Parker, Legal Director of the ACLU of North Carolina, added, “All across the state, Latinos live in fear of being detained as they go to work, worship or run any other routine errand. Local law enforcement agencies have clearly targeted Latinos with immigration checkpoints near certain trailer parks, churches and flea markets.” Deborah Weissman, law professor at the University of North Carolina, co-authored the report and will be testifying at tomorrow’s hearing.

The ACLU urges Congress to eliminate the 287(g) program and other DHS programs that permit state and local police to enforce immigration laws. The ACLU recommends the following initiatives:

* DHS should suspend agreements between localities and ICE pending a comprehensive review of the 287(g) program;
* Local law enforcement age should be required to collect data on all contacts with the public as a way to monitor racial profiling;
* DHS should create a transparent and accessible complaint process for local immigration enforcement; and
* Congress should pass the End Racial Profiling Act without exemptions for immigration enforcement.

For the ACLU testimony, go to:
www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/39242leg20090401.html

For more information about the 287(g) report by the ACLU of North Carolina, go to:
www.law.unc.edu/documents/clinicalprograms/287gpolicyreview.pdf

For more details about the Ortega v. Arpaio case, go to:
www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/35998lgl20080716.html#attach

ACLU sues because of despicable detention conditions in LA

LA Times Blog: 

"Abelardo Chavez Flores, 52, spent about a month and a half at the center, being taken to local jails most nights but also sleeping on the floor on several occasions. According to the suit, he was held for 18 hours at a time in dirty and overcrowded rooms, denied access to a doctor and prevented from brushing his teeth for two weeks.He also wasn’t given an opportunity to see his legal documents or file an appeal on his immigration case."

Aberlardo Chavez immigrated to the U.S. in 1970, he was thirteen years old at the time. He lives in Santa Ana, CA and  has two teenage children who are American citizens. ICE came to his home one morning and arrested him.

see also: 

"Immigration Officials Sued for Holding Detainees in Appalling conditions," ACLU Press Release, April 2, 2009

"Lawsuit:  Detainees Kept in Dirty Basement Rooms,"  Washington Post/AP, April 2, 2009

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Immigrant detainees file lawsuit over jail conditions
7:13 AM | April 2, 2009

LA Times Blog

Federal authorities are violating immigrant detainees’ constitutional rights by holding them for weeks at a detention facility in downtown Los Angeles that was designed as a short-term processing center, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.

The center is “regularly overcrowded, causing violence, safety hazards, and humiliation,” while detainees are denied access to attorneys and courts and are rarely provided drinking water or a change of clothing, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the National Immigration Law Center and the Paul Hastings law firm.

Detainees are held at the center during the day and then shuttled to local jails at night and on weekends, which the suit said “effectively cuts detainees off from contact with the outside world” and deprives them of their basic needs.

“They are detaining people in inhumane conditions, grossly unsanitary and disgusting conditions,” said Marisol Orihuela, a staff attorney at the ACLU. “There are serious violations of due process.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities said they couldn’t comment on pending litigation but issued a statement saying that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had called for a comprehensive review of the nation’s immigration practices and was committed to making “measurable, sustainable progress.”

The department is “committed to providing secure, safe and humane treatment for all of our detainees,” the statement said. “We are continuing to work with other agencies and stakeholders to improve services to those in our custody.”

During a tour of the processing center several months ago, Los Angeles assistant field office director Eric Saldana said the agency was doing its best to keep detainees there for just 12 hours at a time and quickly move them into facilities designed to hold them for longer periods. Sometimes, however, he said, detainees are kept longer or brought back for several days because of delays in accessing travel documents for deportation or because of limited space at local jails.

“Our goal is to get people out of here as quickly as possible,” Saldana said.

The processing center holds up to 250 detainees. There are six large holding cells surrounding a central area with desks, where the detainees are photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed. Each cell has a phone, a bathroom and a bench around the edge. There are also smaller cells for families or juveniles.

Detainees have access to medical staff and can ask to see a judge, Saldana said. Immigration authorities call the staging area the nerve center because all detainees in the Los Angeles area come there first, whether they are picked up at the airport, in the community, a jail or at a work site. All deportees also pass through the center before being put on flights or buses.

There are four named plaintiffs, but Orihuela said the suit was filed on behalf of hundreds of detainees. One plaintiff, Russian immigrant Alla Suvorova, 25, said that for two weeks, she spent every day at the center and every night at local jails. She did not have a chance to have any physical exercise during that time and was kept in a holding room where the toilet was consistently stopped up.

“It was terrible,” Suvorova said in an interview. “They didn’t give us soap. They didn’t let me change clothes. They were transferring me from one jail to another.”

Suvorova, who is married to a U.S. citizen but overstayed a visa, said she also was not told whether she was eligible for bond. When she was transferred to another facility in Washington state, however, she was released on bond at her first hearing. She is still fighting her case.

Another plaintiff, Mexican immigrant Abelardo Chavez Flores, 52, spent about a month and a half at the center, being taken to local jails most nights but also sleeping on the floor on several occasions. According to the suit, he was held for 18 hours at a time in dirty and overcrowded rooms, denied access to a doctor and prevented from brushing his teeth for two weeks.He also wasn’t given an opportunity to see his legal documents or file an appeal on his immigration case.

The plaintiffs have asked the court to order immigration authorities to set a time limit on detention or comply with detention standards, provide hygienic items, sanitary conditions, adequate sleeping facilities and access to legal materials.

“We just want them to follow the minimum standards guaranteed by the Constitution and the statutory rights the detainees have,” Orihuela said.

-- Anna Gorman

link

Serious Danger with new "Constitution free Zone" at US. Border

This is a serious development. Everyone needs to take note.

http://aclu.org/privacy/gen/37306prs20081022.html

Expanding Border Powers Creating ‘Constitution-Free Zone’ That Covers Two-Thirds of Americans (10/22/2008)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – The extraordinary powers of customs and border agents to invade the privacy of individuals at the U.S. border are spreading inland and creating what amounts to a “Constitution-free Zone” that covers fully two-thirds of the American population, the American Civil Liberties Union said today in a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

“The authorities can do things at the border that they could never do to citizens and residents inside our country under the Constitution,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Yet the government is asserting that some of these powers extend as far as 100 miles inside the actual border. It is a classic example of law enforcement powers expanding far beyond their proper boundaries – in this case, literally.”

At the press conference, the ACLU released a map showing the 100-mile “border region” claimed by the government, and cities and states that fall within it. The map, which was created using the latest census data, shows that fully two-thirds of the U.S. population, including 9 of the nation’s top 10 largest metro areas, is within the border zone.

“Americans and Washington policymakers may believe that this is a problem confined to the dusty sands of Arizona or Texas, or the San Diego-Tijuana border, but it stretches far inland across the United States,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. “If allowed to stand, sooner or later a factory worker in southern New Hampshire, a farmer in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, or Joe the plumber outside Toledo, Ohio will find themselves trapped in a Constitution-free Zone.”

Also appearing at the press conference were two individuals who spoke about their personal experience with these overextended powers: San Diego music professor Craig Johnson, and Vince Peppard, a San Diego retiree who with his wife was stopped by the authorities on a road east of San Diego, at least 15 miles from the U.S. border. Peppard and his wife proved they were U.S. citizens but still found themselves subject to demands that they allow a search, interrogated, threatened and harassed.

“Now I’m actually feeling nervous when I’m going to work. . . that I might get pulled over by Border Patrol and asked, ‘where’s your passport?’” said Peppard, who appeared at the event via videotape. “And now – do I have to carry my passport with me when I go to Home Depot or something?”

“In the United States, citizens are not supposed to need an internal passport,” said Steinhardt. “This is our country and we are free to go where we please, without being stopped and interrogated by the authorities, as long as we are not behaving illegally or in a way that is clearly suspicious.”

“Police action is not the only way to fight for freedom,” said Fredrickson. “This is a classic case where Americans need to push back against their government to preserve the core freedoms that we have always enjoyed.”

An interactive version of the “Constitution-free Zone” map, a video of Vince Peppard, and other materials are available at:

www.aclu.org/constitutionfreezone

# # #

Remember in 1940 Germany, certain groups had to "register"

Imagine having to get a license to rent an apartment or house to live in a certain city? Who in world ever heard of that? Of course if you are the all-American, blonde blue-eyed family and your name is Smith or Jones, I bet you could get away with living there without a license. If it were me and I was a Smith or Jones, I would move away. Who would want to live in a city like that?

Probably plenty of people, its the gated-community syndrome.

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ACLU And MALDEF File Lawsuit To Stop Farmers Branch Newest Anti-Immigrant Ordinance (9/15/2008)

Ordinance Requires All Renters To "Register" And Obtain City Licenses To Reside In Farmers Branch, Texas

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

DALLAS – Friday, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Texas filed a complaint in federal court charging that Farmers Branch Ordinance 2952 violates the U.S. Constitution and federal and state statutes. The ordinance, which requires all renters in Farmers Branch to register their presence with the City and obtain an occupancy license, is the city's third effort to restrict residency in Farmers Branch.

"Unfortunately, the City of Farmers Branch doesn't know when to quit," said Nina Perales, Southwest Regional Counsel for MALDEF. "Despite several rulings striking down predecessor ordinances, Farmers Branch continues to try to regulate immigration by violating the rights of all renters in Farmers Branch."

A federal judge has twice ruled unconstitutional the city's attempts to pass such measures. The third such effort, Ordinance 2952, was passed by the city just five days after U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay struck down an earlier version of the rental ban. The ordinance was scheduled to take effect Saturday, September 13 but was enjoined late Friday afternoon by U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle in a separate related lawsuit.

"Anyone with a sense of history should be wary of an ordinance requiring a city's residents to 'register' and obtain an 'occupancy license,'" said Lisa Graybill, Legal Director for the ACLU of Texas.

"Far from curing the defects of the previous ordinances, the new ordinance continues to violate the Constitution. Rather than ending the city's misguided meddling in people's lives, it seeks to expand its reach by subjecting everyone to this intrusive registration and licensing regime, which would expose private domestic arrangements and personal details," noted Omar Jadwat, staff attorney for the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.

The lawsuit charges that Ordinance 2952 allows Farmers Branch to enforce immigration law, a responsibility of the federal government. The ordinance also violates the equal protection and due process provisions of the Constitution.

A copy of the complaint is available online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/discrim/36759lgl20080912.html

Attorneys who worked on the case include Jadwat and Lucas Guttentag of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project; Graybill of the ACLU of Texas; Perales and Marisol L. Perez of MALDEF; and David Broiles.

ACLU Sue to Block E-Verify Order in Rhode Island

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ACLU sues to halt RI governor's immigration order
By RAY HENRY
The Associated Press/Washington Post
Wednesday, September 3, 2008; 4:08 PM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A civil rights group filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to block Gov. Don Carcieri from enforcing an executive order requiring private employers to electronically check the immigration status of new hires.

The lawsuit, filed by the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, challenges an executive order that Carcieri signed in March to clamp down on illegal immigration.

Carcieri's order requires state police and prison officials to identify illegal immigrants for possible deportation. It also forces state agencies and companies doing business with the state to use a federal database to check the immigration status of new employees. Companies that refuse to comply could lose their state contracts.

The ACLU argues that the database, E-Verify, disproportionately identifies foreign-born employees as ineligible to work and that the database could encourage employers to discriminate against workers who appear foreign.

A 2007 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security showed 96 percent of people claiming to be U.S. citizens were cleared by the database on the first try. But the report said 3 percent of foreign-born workers with the right to work in the U.S. were erroneously rejected by the E-Verify system, compared with .1 percent of U.S. citizens born here. The report cautioned that the error rates cannot be fixed quickly...

for link to complete AP/WaPo article click here

From the ACLU Regarding DHS and Travel

...recently, the TSA expressed interest in having every traveler wear an "electro-muscular disruption" bracelet that airline personnel or marshals could use to shock passengers into submission. -ACLU web page

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Tell Congress: Rein in DHS Travel Abuses
Planning a vacation? Thinking about traveling outside the country?

If you travel outside the United States, you can kiss your right to privacy, and perhaps your laptop, digital camera and cell phone, goodbye.

With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information -- including your personal and business documents, emails, phone calls, and web history.

And what happens if you refuse to let the agents download your personal photos? Or if you have encrypted your private information? Then Border Patrol -- which is now an agency of the Department of Homeland Security -- can simply copy your entire hard drive or even take your device and hang on to it indefinitely.

Tell Congress: it’s time to rein in travel abuses by the Department of Homeland Security.

Unfortunately, seizing laptops and cameras at the border isn’t the only travel security measure that infringes on our civil liberties.

Just last month, the U.S. government's "terrorist watch list" surpassed 1,000,000 names and is growing by over 20,000 names per month. The watch list includes the names of prominent people, like Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), plus hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans many of them with common names like Robert Johnson and James Robinson. Your name might be on the list. But there's no way to know for sure until you are delayed or even detained for hours in a back room. If you discover your name is on the list, it's nearly impossible to get off. It actually took an Act of Congress to get Nelson Mandela off the list. No joke. An Act of Congress.

These abuses have something in common: They make all of us into suspects, with no rule of law and no accountability.

Tell Congress: it’s time to rein in travel abuses by the Department of Homeland Security.

It’s hard to know what surveillance-state bureaucrats will come up with next. For instance, many airports are using scanners that are so invasive that they are like a virtual strip search! See-through body scanning machines are capable of showing an image of a passenger's naked body -- an example can be seen on the right. Security measures like this are extremely intrusive -- and should only be used when there is good cause to suspect that an individual is a security risk.

And recently, the TSA expressed interest in having every traveler wear an "electro-muscular disruption" bracelet that airline personnel or marshals could use to shock passengers into submission. Unless something is done, this plan may not be as far-fetched as one would think.

Traveling shouldn’t mean checking your rights when you’re checking your luggage. It’s time for some sanity when it comes to security.

aclu.org

A Clue to the Future of ICE Raids

For a long time it seemed that ICE was only trying to scare people and bring terror to undocumented immigrants throughout the United States - using periodic immigration raids as examples...

Yet at I mentioned in a previous post, immigration experts see this as a longer trend that will grow in intensity - with the ultimate goal of deporting all undocumented immigrants by 2012.

Many people say that there will be changes with the next administration -- with Obama or if McCain wins and returns to his previous immigration stance - Operation Endgame could suddenly go away.

What is disconcerting is that during the presidential debates NONE of the candidates said they would end the ICE raids...

Below is an op-ed piece about Operation Endgame written by the ACLU, published in the Boston Globe in 2007.
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Inhumane raid was just one of many

By Carol Rose and Christopher Ott | March 26, 2007

Boston Globe

IF THE CHAOTIC immigration raid in New Bedford earlier this month troubled you, we have news: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, is just getting warmed up.

We know this because the New Bedford raid was part of a frighteningly ambitious plan laid out by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 -- and it hasn't received nearly enough scrutiny.

The plan is called Endgame, and its details are available online on our group's website (www.aclum.org/endgame.pdf). It's a 10-year campaign to track down and deport all the immigrants to the United States who are living and working here without proper documentation, by the year 2012.

Let's be clear: This means expelling roughly 12 million people.

We've seen Endgame at work already in other parts of the country, with ICE conducting more and bigger raids. In December, for example, the agency raided Swift & Company slaughterhouses in six states, arresting about 1,300 workers and deporting roughly half of them.

Already, on any given day, ICE holds approximately 26,000 people in detention. And on March 6, we got a chance to see Endgame at work on a large scale here in Massachusetts. We saw the human cost of an operation directed at 361 people.

The pace of raids will need to accelerate, however, in order to meet Endgame's aggressive deportation goals over the next five years. We'll see more of the surreal New Bedford-style tactics: arrest first, ask questions later. We'll hear more stories of the human suffering that results from such tactics: of nursing babies who become dehydrated when separated from their mothers, of 7-year-olds frantically looking for their missing mothers, and of minors being flown to distant states without adequate protection.

We'll see more people's rights trampled, and more families torn apart by ICE's race to deport in order to meet Endgame's staggering goal.

Obviously, the United States has the right to control who enters our country, as well as the right to deport those who are not authorized to be here. But the US Constitution also says that everyone's fundamental rights must be respected while it is being determined whether or not they have a right to be here.

Even most US citizens could not prove their citizenship on demand. If ICE raided your workplace, could you? If you're like most people, you don't carry documents such as your passport or birth certificate with you at all times. And in a free society, you shouldn't have to.

That's why those detained by ICE need protections such as the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, legal representation, and, when necessary, interpretive services. They need time and a fair chance to prove their case. It's also critical to make provisions for the children and other dependents of those arrested.

Some of those dependents are US citizens, even if the detainees themselves are not -- and all of them are human beings.

The pandemonium of the raid in New Bedford was deeply troubling in this regard. If ICE couldn't handle 361 detainees without violating people's rights and tearing families apart, how will they cope with millions?

The simple answer is they can't. There is no way to expel 12 million people without terrorizing and compromising the civil liberties of anyone who "looks foreign." Even US citizens, as well as immigrants who are here legally, will live with the fear of arrest.

ICE tactics call to mind sinister human rights abuses from other parts of the world. The United States went to war to stop Slobodan Milosevic's attempt to "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo in 1999. We should ask ourselves how, just eight years later, we came to be carrying out a policy that involves such similar tactics -- lightning raids, mass arrests, packed detention centers, and mass deportations.

We must stop it. It's time to bring operation Endgame itself to an end. We need an immigration policy that balances the right to control our borders with the civil liberties we must preserve in order to remain free.

Carol Rose is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Christopher Ott is communications director.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

for link to Boston Globe article click here