Lawsuit filed against ICE for inappropriate procedure during raids

A few days ago in a discussion in one of my classes, one student stated "they [ICE] won't pick up Latinos just because they have darker or have Spanish surnames. They only pick up people who look illegal." I told the class that this was not so. A number of recent cases attest to ICE being more indiscriminate about who they want to detain.

the following LA Times article states that a lawsuit has been filed on the Van Nuys raid that occurred in February 2008.

"Mike Whitehead, also born in the United States, said he was detained for about 45 minutes and had to answer a few questions and show his identification before being let go."


From the Los Angeles Times
L.A. civil rights attorney files claims over federal immigration raid
Peter Schey's legal action seeks damages for employees caught up in Van Nuys workplace immigration enforcement action.
By Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 25, 2008

A longtime Los Angeles civil rights attorney is trying a new strategy to push federal immigration authorities to change the way they conduct workplace raids.

Peter Schey filed 114 federal claims for damages late Thursday on behalf of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who were temporarily detained during a recent raid at Micro Solutions Enterprises in Van Nuys.

On Feb. 7, armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents went into the company, blocked the exits and prevented all the employees from leaving while they carried out federal arrest warrants for eight people and a search warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. Those eight were arrested on criminal charges and 130 others were arrested on immigration violations.

Schey said immigration authorities treated U.S. citizens and green card holders like suspected criminals without any reason to believe they had broken the law.

"That group detention is completely unconstitutional," said Schey, head of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles. "They have no individual probable cause, yet they come in like the Gestapo."

Immigration authorities said the warrants were signed by a U.S. magistrate judge, and the search warrant was issued based on the "likelihood that evidence of criminal violations would be found at the location."

"The search was properly conducted in accordance with the warrant, federal rules of criminal procedure and ICE policies," ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said in a written statement.

Carl Shusterman, a private immigration attorney, said he had not seen the claims but that ICE's changing its practices seemed like "sort of a long shot."

"How can they possibly sort out the legal and illegal employees without questioning them?" he said. "How could they conduct these raids at all if they didn't hold people at least a little while?"

But John Ayala, Southern California chapter chairman of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said he believed the claims would force ICE to follow the letter of the law when conducting enforcement actions.

"It's very important to remind ICE and Department of Homeland Security that the Constitution is at play and people have rights," Ayala said. "They should go in there looking for those eight workers. They shouldn't go in there on a fishing expedition."

The 114 legal workers, including Clare Cox, are each seeking $5,000 in damages.

Cox, a U.S. citizen, said she heard the agents before she saw them. Without identifying themselves, the agents told everyone to line up against the wall, she said. For about 35 to 40 minutes, Cox said, she was prohibited from leaving.

"I felt like we were being arrested," said Cox, who distributes inventory at the company. "I felt like we had no rights."

Cox said immigration authorities could have handled the arrests in a more diplomatic and less theatrical way.

"I believe in immigration laws. I believe in everyone being documented," she said. "I don't believe in these scare tactics."

Mike Whitehead, also born in the United States, said he was detained for about 45 minutes and had to answer a few questions and show his identification before being let go. The whole experience was scary and intimidating, he said.

"It was degrading. I was born in this country," said Whitehead, a sales representative for Micro Solutions. "It could have been handled completely differently. It could have been handled with dignity."

anna.gorman@latimes.com

Federal Lawsuit against ICE for Improper Arrests

Attorneys from the Seton Hall Law School in Newark filed a suit in federal court against ICE for not using proper warrants during raids. This lawsuit was a long time coming - since the Swift ICE raids of December 12, 2006 ICE has repeatedly broken constitutional law -

This past summer several hundred DREAMERS converged in Washington, D.C. to lobby for the DREAM ACT - while preparing for the trip, the drivers were given information in a conference call - where they were told that ICE was breaking the rules and it didn't seem to matter - this information has circulated among the immigrant communities.

From descriptions of ICE forcing themselves into people's homes (with no warrant); ICE picking up U.S. citizens; to ICE physically abusing detainees at the point of arrest; not allowing detainees to contact their attorney's or their families, ICE transporting detainees over state lines without proper arraignment - among numerous violations of the U.S. Constitution.

See Dream Act Texas Post "No Warrants Needed in ICE Raid" from October 14, 2007

ICE arrested 30,408 undocumented immigrants in 2006 - 15,000 in 2005.



"The lawsuit claims that agents, sometimes misrepresenting themselves as local police officers hunting for criminals, entered homes where no fugitives being sought were present and detained residents without showing any legal cause." (NYT)

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Lawsuit Challenges Immigration Raids in New Jersey

New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: April 4, 2008

Immigration agents systematically entered homes and made arrests without proper warrants during raids to round up immigration fugitives in New Jersey, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

The lawsuit, brought by lawyers at the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, will provide a constitutional test of law enforcement methods often used by immigration agents since May 2006 when they began operations across the country to track down and deport immigrants who had been ordered to leave by the courts.

The suit, against officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on behalf of 10 plaintiffs, including two United States citizens, contends that teams of ICE agents used “deceit or, in some cases, raw force” to gain “unlawful entry.”

The lawsuit claims that agents, sometimes misrepresenting themselves as local police officers hunting for criminals, entered homes where no fugitives being sought were present and detained residents without showing any legal cause. Immigration agents have broad authority to question foreigners about their immigration status, but they may not enter a home without either a warrant or consent.

A spokesman for the immigration agency, Michael Gilhooly, said he could not comment on pending litigation. The suit was filed in Federal District Court in New Jersey.

Speaking generally, Mr. Gilhooly said all fugitives who were targets of ICE searches had been ordered deported by immigration judges.

“They became fugitives when they chose to ignore the judge’s order,” Mr. Gilhooly said, adding that operations to arrest fugitives “are planned after meticulous investigation and surveillance.”

In the last two years, immigration authorities have faced intense political pressure to track down fugitive illegal immigrants. In most cases, the immigrants overstayed visas or were caught when they tried to sneak into the country over a land border, then failed to appear at hearings, leading judges to order them to be deported.

Last year, ICE agents arrested 30,408 immigration fugitives, according to official figures, about double the number for 2006.

One plaintiff in the lawsuit, Maria Argueta, has been a legal immigrant since 2001. During a predawn operation in January at her home in North Bergen, N.J., the lawsuit claims, ICE agents persuaded Ms. Argueta to open her door by telling her they were police officers searching for a wanted criminal. Ms. Argueta was detained and held for 36 hours.

Another plaintiff, Arturo Flores, a United States citizen, said ICE agents showed no warrant when they forced their way into his house in Clifton, N.J., in November 2006 and conducted a search. A third plaintiff, Veronica Covias, a legal immigrant in Paterson, N.J., said agents pushed open her door in March 2007 even though she demanded that they show her a warrant.

for link to NYT article click the title of this post

ACLU Files Suit Against ICE for Drugging Deportees

"The new information shows the government's forcible drugging policy is more widespread than previously suggested," said ACLU attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham.

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Deportees file motion over forced sedation

A pastor in Riverside is one of two men who accuse immigration officials of injecting them with potentially lethal doses of anti-psychotic drugs against their will.
By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 10, 2007

The ACLU filed a motion Tuesday in federal court to stop immigration authorities from forcibly drugging deportees in order to send them back to their home countries on commercial airlines.

The motion comes after an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified before the Senate last month that 50 immigrants had been given psychotropic drugs against their will over a seven-month period. Thirty-three of them had no previous psychiatric diagnosis.

One deportee, a Christian pastor in Riverside, was pinned down in a holding cell in Los Angeles the day before he was scheduled to be flown to his native Indonesia, the ACLU contended in court papers. Another, a Senegalese man, was wrestled down in the aisle of a plane parked at LAX and injected with medication. Those two deportees were in addition to the 50 cited during the Senate hearing.

"The new information shows the government's forcible drugging policy is more widespread than previously suggested," said ACLU attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham.

"It's both medically inappropriate and shocking that the government believes it can treat immigrants like animals and shoot them up with powerful anti-psychotic drugs that can be fatal -- without a doctor's examination or court oversight."

The motion comes as part of a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed in June on behalf of the Riverside pastor and the Senegalese man, who were detained at Terminal Island and then forcibly drugged during the deportation process. The civil rights group contends that practice violates both the Bill of Rights and federal law regarding the medical treatment of detainees, and may constitute torture.

Both men are appealing their asylum claims. They ultimately were not deported and have been released, pending their appeals.

ICE spokeswoman Lauri Haley would not comment about the pending litigation, but said the forced medications were exceedingly rare. When they are necessary, they are both legal and overseen by "medical professionals," she said.

"Medical sedation is an act of last resort and is rarely used," she said.

According to a brief filed by the government, ICE policy allows for forcibly medicating detainees only if "a medical professional from the U.S. Public Health Service. . . determined that they present a danger to themselves or to others."

The government has not disclosed the circumstances of the forced medications. Only one of the two ACLU plaintiffs even knows what drugs he was given, according to documents recently filed in the case.

The day before he was to be sent back to his native Indonesia, Raymond Soeoth said, two officers pinned him down on a bench in a holding cell and injected him in the buttocks. His medical records show that they gave him two powerful anti-psychotic medications -- Haldol (haloperidol) and Cogentin -- even though he had no history of psychosis.

No doctor had examined Soeoth, an ethnic Chinese and Christian who fled his predominantly Muslim country in 1999 to escape religious persecution, he said. An unsigned note in his medical record, which was attached to the motion, said "psyche meds requested. . . for patient's threats to kill self if deported." Another note said Soeoth was given the medication for "telling officers he would not board airplane."

Dr. Mark Mills, a Columbia University professor of psychiatry retained by the ACLU to review the case, called the involuntary medication "profoundly disturbing."

If Soeoth was suicidal, the appropriate medication would not be Haldol, which can cause serious side effects, but "an anti-depressant or mood-stabilizing drug," Mills wrote in a sworn declaration. Haldol "is never clinically appropriate for patients who are not suffering from some form of psychosis," Mills wrote.

Mills also said that the dose of Cogentin was twice the standard dose of 2 milligrams. "In more than 30 years of psychiatric practice, I have never seen or heard of a case where 4 milligrams was delivered at once, particularly as an initial matter."

The case of the second plaintiff, Amadou Laime Diouf, was equally troubling to Mills, particularly because authorities made no note of the medication they used and because they injected him through clothing, which "greatly increases the likelihood of site infection."

In a sworn statement, Diouf said the incident occurred while on the tarmac at LAX waiting to be flown to his native Senegal. When Diouf asked a flight attendant to talk to the captain because he felt he was being deported in violation of an appeals court order, his immigration escorts grew angry, wrestling him to the floor and injecting him through his pants, he said.

Hearing the commotion, the captain ordered Diouf and the escorts off the plane. But the drug made Diouf's legs numb. He fell going down the stairs, and was disoriented and sleepy for days, he said.

Arulanantham of the ACLU said the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered a stay on Diouf's deportation at the time immigration authorities were trying to remove him.

He said that the Soeoth and Diouf cases showed that the practice has not been limited to plaintiffs posing a danger.

The men and their lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. to issue an order halting the practice while the lawsuit is being settled. Hatter declined to immediately rule on an earlier request to do the same.

Government attorneys, in turn, asked Hatter to dismiss the injunction motion because the plaintiffs could not "demonstrate they face an immediate threat of irreparable injury as they allege occurred in the past."

They also said the policy has changed so that ICE now must get an order from a judge to medicate a detainee.

ACLU attorneys said it was not clear what type of hearing the detainees would get and whether they could appeal.

In Tuesday's filing, they argued that testimony provided by Julie Myers during her Senate confirmation hearing to become chief of ICE contradicted "government officials' repeated assertions that the practice is rare and reserved only for emergencies."

"Based on the numbers Ms. Myers provided, it appears that every month the government forcibly drugs about five noncitizens who are not mentally ill."



joe.mozingo@latimes.com

Suit Against ICE for Swift Raids

Swift Bacon - Do you still buy it?









Reasons not to buy Swift Bacon
1. Bacon is really bad for your cholesterol.
2. Eating bacon on a regular basis, significantly contributes to the incidence of diabetes and heart trouble.
3. Swift Bacon probably has bad energy now that the company colluded with ICE on the raids in Dec. 2006.
4. Eating animals is bad for your health and theirs.
5. The Virgin of Guadalupe might be upset that you are eating Swift products since they allowed the raid to occur on her feast day.

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Democracy Now
September 28, 2008

Amy Goodman interviewing
Gloria Contrera-Edin, Executive Director of Centro Legal


On December 12, federal agents raided Swift plants across six states. More than 1,200 undocumented workers were arrested overall, including more than 200 workers in Worthington.

The lawsuit claims that federal agents "insulted, abused, and humiliated the plaintiffs on account of their race." The suit says female Latino workers were ordered to disrobe in front of federal agents during the raid, while white workers were allowed to move about the plant freely...

The lawsuit was filed on September 4 of this year, the day after Labor Day, and it’s on behalf of ten plaintiffs who are either US citizens, legal permanent residents, or those who are authorized to work in this country. We are alleging constitutional violations...

What’s important to recognize in this particular case is that this really wasn’t a typical immigration raid. This was a part of a criminal investigation that the government had been conducting for possibly over a year. They had a list of people whom they could have gone in, picked up, without any disrupt to the companies, to the communities, and they chose not to. And so, whenever you’re part of a criminal investigation -- now, I’m not a criminal lawyer, but I know enough to say that when you’re part of a criminal investigation, you’re afforded certain protections. You’re afforded the protection of an unreasonable detention. You’re also afforded the protection to have the right to remain silent, the right to counsel. You’re also afforded the protection to be able to speak to an attorney if an attorney is available to you. In all these situation and across the country, people were not afforded these rights. And so that’s why we filed this lawsuit...

100-plus agents descended upon this Swift Company packing plant in Worthington, Minnesota, and we know that -- we also know that the employer, Swift and Company, supervisors were working with the agents and preventing people from leaving the site. So they surrounded the premises with agents and their vehicles. They pulled up approximately six buses to load people up. And then they systematically and procedurally started rounding up people who were of Latino descent.

It’s important to recognize here that people who did not look Latino were allowed to roam freely throughout the plant, and so those who were Latino, even if you were a citizen or a resident, were required to prove that they were here lawfully. Now, I personally can’t prove that I’m a US citizen. I wouldn’t know how to do it. But in this case they required everyone to do it upon the threat of deportation and removal...


for audio interview and transcript click the title to this post

photo: http://boortz.com/images/swift_bacon_1955.jpg

Could this be Called Persecution?

Immigration Raids Single Out Hispanics, Lawsuit Says
By NINA BERNSTEIN
New York Times
Published: September 21, 2007

A federal lawsuit filed yesterday charges that agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement unlawfully force their way into the homes of Hispanic families in the New York area without court warrants or other legal justification, sometimes pushing down doors in the middle of the night, in search of people who do not live there.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court in Manhattan as a class action, accuses the immigration agency of conducting the raids in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable searches, harming citizens and legal residents of the United States as well as foreigners here illegally...

According to the complaint, the raids are part of a program called Operation Return to Sender that was started in 2006 to arrest and deport “fugitive aliens” or immigrants previously ordered to leave the country. But, the lawsuit contends, “the agents regularly raid homes where the fugitive is not present and could not reasonably have been believed to be present.”

The complaint contends that “the unstated goal of these raids is to gain access to constitutionally protected areas in hope of seizing as many undocumented persons as possible” to meet annual arrest quotas recently increased by the agents’ superiors to 1,000 per fugitive team, up from 125 arrests in 2003. Mark Thorn, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the New York region, said that he was not familiar with the lawsuit, and that the agency does not comment on litigation...

In the case of ..[the Aguilar] family, immigration agents burst into their home in East Hampton to hunt for an illegal immigrant without a criminal record — Ms. Aguilar’s ex-husband, who had not lived in the house since 2003, when they divorced and he was ordered deported.

After detaining and questioning the frightened family members, including Ms. Aguilar’s 12-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, the complaint said, the agents threatened to return.

In an account disputed by agents at the time, the complaint contends that another plaintiff, Nelly Amayo, was arrested in her East Hampton home when she demanded to see a search warrant. It says agents twisted her arm and eventually left her in her nightclothes in Manhattan.

Another raid was in a rooming house in Mount Kisco, N.Y., where David Lazaro Perez and other residents were awakened about 4 a.m. March 18 by agents who did not show a search warrant. The complaint said agents took his wallet containing $700 and that it was returned without the money.





For complete article click title of this post

Over 4,000 Suits Filed in 2007 Against ICE For Delay in "Name Checks"

There were only 680 suits filed in 2005, but they have exploded to over 4,000 in 2007. At this time over 61,000 people have been waiting for 2 years on their "name checks,"

Its a brutal double bind. People are insulted and harassed by ICE for not having documents, yet ICE is responsible for the delay in processing green card applications...

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Caught in a bureaucratic black hole

Applicants seeking U.S. citizenship languish for years as the FBI conducts cumbersome records checks. Lawsuits are a result.
By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 10, 2007


Seeking to become a U.S. citizen, Biljana Petrovic filed her application, completed her interview and passed her civics test.

More than three years later, she is still waiting to be naturalized -- held up by an FBI name-check process that has been criticized as slow, inefficient and a danger to national security.

Petrovic, a stay-at-home mother in Los Altos, Calif., who has no criminal record, has sued the federal government to try to speed up the process. She said it's as if her application has slipped into a "black hole."

"It's complete frustration," said Petrovic, who is originally from the former Yugoslavia and is a naturalized Canadian citizen. "It's not like I am applying to enter the country. I have been here for 19 years."

Nearly 320,000 people were waiting for their name checks to be completed as of Aug. 7, including more than 152,000 who had been waiting for more than six months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. More than 61,000 had been waiting for more than two years.

Applicants for permanent residency or citizenship have lost jobs, missed out on student loans and in-state tuition, and been unable to vote or bring relatives into the country. The delays have prompted scores of lawsuits around the country.

Already this fiscal year, more than 4,100 suits have been filed against the citizenship and immigration agency, compared with 2,650 last year and about 680 in 2005. The mandamus suits ask federal judges to compel immigration officials to adjudicate the cases. The majority of the cases were prompted by delays in checking names, spokesman Chris Bentley said...

for complete article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-citizenship10sep10,1,5647808.story