NewsTaco

By Ignacio Torres, NBCLatino

A group of U.S. Citizens and undocumented immigrants filed a series of lawsuits on Tuesday claiming abuse by Custom and Border Protection (CBP) agents around the country.

Groups like Americans for Immigrant Justice and the American Immigration Council, who are representing some of the 10 plaintiffs along with other immigration advocacy groups, claim they collectively filed the lawsuit to outline a pattern of abuse they say is seen around across the country.

“Enforcement cannot come at the expense of civil rights,” said Melissa Crow, Legal Action Center at the American Immigration Council, an immigration advocacy organization representing one of the plaintiffs. Crow adds “these cases are just the tip of the iceberg.”

According to CBP’s spokeswoman, Jenny Burke, the agency does not respond to pending litigation.

“We do not tolerate misconduct or abuse within our ranks and we fully cooperate with all investigations of alleged unlawful conduct, on or off duty, by any of our CBP employees and contractors,” Burke explained in a statement.

Among the plaintiffs is a four-year-old U.S. citizen who was detained at John F. Kennedy airport while returning home from a vacation in Guatemala with her grandfather. According to the suit, after an agent found out the plaintiffs parents were undocumented while trying to reunite them at the airport, he refused to give the daughter to ‘illegals.’

The plaintiff returned to Guatemala alongside her grandfather, according to the lawsuit.

In a press conference another plaintiff, Lucy Rogers, 27, a U.S. Citizen and medical interpreter for immigrant farm workers says many Latino residents in her community near the U.S./Canada border are now living in fear of police officers.

“My experience was humiliating and intimidating experience,” Rogers says. “this is not what living in America should be about.”

Rogers says she was arrested under suspicion of human trafficking while transporting two of her clients, whom she says she didn’t know were undocumented at the time.

In one of the lawsuits, a group of undocumented immigrants allege that they were forced to stay in icy-cold detention centers, without beds or blankets.

New York, Texas and Ohio are among the states where the suits were filed.

This article was first published in NBCLatino.

Ignacio Torres graduated from University of California, Davis and The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism where he specialized in immigration reporting. Ignacio is a California native but born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico, where his parents currently reside. A foodie at heart, Ignacio is always in search of the next best taco truck. He has worked for the TODAY Show, Rock Center and has covered politics for La Opinion newspaper based in Los Angeles.

[Photo by CBP Photography]

Before I launch into a discussion of the recently completed redistricting trial in San Antonio let me give you a bit of information concerning the sections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that pertain to Latinos. Besides the language provision (Sec. 203) which will not be part of my discussion, there are two sections very important to Latinos, Sections 2 and 5. The most powerful of these is 5.

Section 5 requires all jurisdictions covered under the law, including all of Texas, to pre-clear any and all election changes with the Department of Justice (DOJ) before implementation. All changes — polling place changes, ballot changes, redistricting changes and so forth. In order for a jurisdiction to be covered, it needs to have a history and legacy of racism, something Texas certainly has. And, if you think racism is dead in Texas, just travel and try and get service in some rural arts of the state or, in more urbane areas, try and play golf at your local country club. You may be served, but very reluctantly, and you will get stared at a lot, as if they haven’t seen Latinos “dressed to the nines” before (not that I would know from experience)!

Anyway, Section 5 is kind of like a watch dog law that keeps jurisdictions that have had a reputation of acting arbitrarily from doing so. Asi, Section 5 is like a preemptive strike. No lawsuits are involved, only questions, and the decision of the DOJ as to whether a jurisdiction has violated the law, and then requiring that the law be changed prior to implementation. And, the will revisit just to see if Section 5 is being followed in the new change.

Section 2 is really technical, requiring certain findings after a lawsuit has been brought by the discriminated community. A jurisdiction needs to have violated a part of the VRA,  and this needs to be established as the result of a trial brought by the offended Latino community. The problems with section claims are that a law has to have been broken, and then a judge has to have decided that the jurisdiction has broken the law. The burden of proof here is high, and if you get a judge who does not like voting rights cases (they will say so openly), then your claim is dead in the water. In the latter case, regardless of whether you are right or wrong.

The Texas redistricting case in which I testified was a 14th Amendment case, due process, brought against the State of Texas. The citation names Governor Perry, but that is just because he signed it into law. The real culprits were the gerrymanderers, state redistricting committees, certain private political operatives and members of the United States House of Representatives.

Latino plaintiff attorneys (that’s the representatives of the Latino communities affected) were led by Nina Perales, Vice President of Litigation for MALDEF. Perales presented an almost flawless case attacking the tactics and techniques of the redistricters. I really can’t do a “color commentary” of the case because the judges are still deliberating. I will say this though, the trial revealed several things. Foremost among them, the sophisticated evolution the state has achieved over the last 40 years to discriminate against Latinos in this process, but also how poorly a bunch of amateurs do in an area requiring expertise and experience.

It revealed the hypocrisy of the Republican Party’s overtures toward Latinos. While saying that they welcome Latinos into their ranks, the Republicans did everything possible to deny Latinos the right to vote and elect candidates of their choice during the redistricting process.

Finally, and most importantly, the hypocrisy of the Republican Party’s Latino outreach was revealed in that, instead of welcoming Latinos, they really revealed the extent that racism has come to play a part in their electoral strategies and their continued attempt to use Latinos to help them gain and hold control of power in this state.

By Rebecca Acuña, Dep. Political Director for Base Outreach for the Texas Democratic Party

The 82nd legislative session began on a precipice of disaster. Absent of the federal stimulus dollars on which Governor Perry relied in 2009, the session kicked off with a historic budget deficit. The budget shortfall meant that hundreds of thousands of teachers would be laid-off, and that children would be uprooted from their neighborhood schools and be shoved into already overcrowded classrooms.

Texans, reading the gloomy headlines, looked to our Governor for direction during the biennial State of the State address, in which the he would announce his emergency priorities. Rather than address our state’s budget woes, Governor Perry decided to target communities of color with unnecessary laws. And there, during his State of the State before the 82nd Legislature, Governor Perry proclaimed voter suppression legislation a state emergency.

Given that there is no evidence of voter impersonation in Texas, the politics behind the Governor’s declaring voter id a state emergency were evident. It was a move to appease the Tea Party and the right-wing extremists who have taken the Republican Party hostage. An extreme faction that fears the rapidly changing population of our state; a population that is becoming more Latino, and increasingly Democratic.

Sadly, Governor Perry’s “emergency” legislation requiring voters to present photo identification at the ballot box will do more than just stoke the flames of fear. This legislation will place costly and unnecessary barriers between voters and the ballot box and disenfranchise Latinos (yes, I’m talking about U.S. citizens).

According to a 2006 study by the non-partisan Brennan Institute, 11% of all eligible voters and 16% of Hispanic voting-age citizens do not have current government-issued identification. In Texas, more than 600,000 registered voters lack government issued identification. It is because of these 600,000 registered voters that the Department of Justice announced that they would not yet pre-clear — or okay — the voter identification legislation signed by the Governor. In essence, the DOJ said that Texas, under the Voting Rights Act, had yet to prove that the legislation will not become an obstacle to the ballot box.

The costs and burdens associated with obtaining government-issued identification make the law tantamount to a poll tax. Potential voters will have to pay not just for the identification itself, but also for the backup documents needed to obtain that identification; documents like a birth certificate, naturalization papers, or a passport.

Further, if you’re Latino and were born on the border, good luck trying to obtain a passport. There have been numerous incidents in which Latinos, some of which served our country in the armed forces, have been denied passports. The reason? They were born on the border to a midwife because their parents were too poor to go to a hospital. (If you don’t believe me, there’s a lawsuit). Now, no passport can mean no driver’s license, which means no fundamental right to vote. (Note: the law allows individuals to use a concealed handgun permit as identification to vote, but not a Veteran’s Identification Card).

From illegal racial gerrymanders to voter suppression legislation, the governor seems all too eager to trample on the voting rights of Texans. Based on the governor’s record — one that decimates public education, hurts our seniors and our children — it is no wonder that he is trying to do everything possible to keep you from voting.

Rebecca Acuña is the Deputy Political Director for Base Outreach for the Texas Democratic Party.

Yesterday the Department of Justice announced a lawsuit against the State of Alabama for its anti-Latino law that not only requires police to inquire about immigration status and penalizing employers hiring people without papers, but also requires children in schools to verify their status before enrolling.

Many believed that the law was already unconstitutional — given previous case law suggesting such — but many civil rights groups decried the law as an unprecedented breach of civil rights. Perhaps what made it all even worse was when Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks said he would “short of shooting” immigrants to prevent their migration.

Which is to say, the whole issue has been heated from day one. Now the Department of Justice’s lawsuit is going after Alabama’s state law because of how it interferes with federal responsibility for immigration:

In a complaint and brief filed in the Northern District of Alabama, the department said that various provisions of H.B. 56 conflict with federal immigration law and undermine the federal government’s careful balance of immigration enforcement priorities and objectives.   The brief filed today makes clear that, while the federal government values state assistance and cooperation with respect to immigration enforcement, a state cannot set its own immigration policy, much less pass laws that conflict with federal enforcement of the immigration laws.

Alabama’s law is designed to affect virtually every aspect of an unauthorized immigrant’s daily life, from employment to housing to transportation to entering into and enforcing contracts to going to school.  H.B. 56 further criminalizes mere unlawful presence and, like Arizona’s law, expands the opportunities for Alabama police to push aliens toward incarceration for various new immigration crimes by enforcing an immigration status verification system.

Consistent with the department’s position in United States v. Arizona, in which the department last year successfully obtained a preliminary injunction against Arizona’s S.B. 1070, the brief said that the mandates that H.B. 56 imposes on Alabama law enforcement may also result in the harassment and detention of foreign visitors, legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens who may not be able to readily prove their lawful status.  In addition, H.B. 56 will place significant burdens on federal agencies, diverting their resources away from dangerous criminal aliens and other high-priority targets.    In addition to interfering with law enforcement, H.B. 56 imposes further burdens on children by demanding that students prove their lawful presence, which could discourage parents from enrolling their children in school.

So there we have it. While the Obama Administration is taking on Arizona and Alabama in lawsuits, it has yet to take this step in Georgia, where another terrible law is actually devastating the economy of that state as immigrant workers leave.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD

[Photo By Svgalbertian]

The Alabama immigration law hailed as the toughest anti-immigrant measure in the nation is being challenged in court by a coalition of civil rights groups.

The group, which includes the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Immigration Law Center, filed a lawsuit in federal court Friday criticizing the law for its “unprecedented reach.”

“Individuals who may be perceived as ‘foreign’ by state or local law enforcement agents will be in constant jeopardy of harassment and unlawfully prolonged detention by state law enforcement officers,” the lawsuit says.

The law, similar to Arizona’s SB 1070, would require law enforcement officials to question the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. It also prohibits undocumented students from pursuing a higher education or looking for work, and public schools would be required to investigate the immigration status of its students.

Landlords would also be prohibited from renting to undocumented immigrants.

“This legislation is another indication of Alabama’s Republican leadership going way to the right wing,” John Zippert, program director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Rural Training & Research Center, said.

The agricultural sector in the state has been particularly critical of the negative effects the law could have in the farming industry.

“This is scaring Hispanic workers away, not just from the Alabama fields, but also from the northern Alabama, in chicken processing plants. I don’t think other unemployed people are going to take those jobs. It’s very hard work and not fairly paid. From an economic standpoint, this is a real problem,” Zippert said.

The law is scheduled to go into effect on Sept. 1.

References:
ABC News

[Photo By Fibonacci Blue]

Georgia’s anti-immigrant law inspired by Arizona’s SB 1070 is facing a lawsuit from several civil rights groups that oppose the measure calling it “hate rhetoric.”

The groups that have banded together and filed a class action lawsuit last Thursday include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Asian Law Caucus, and a coalition of other organizations.

“This law undermines our core American values of fairness and equality,” Mary Bauer, Southern Poverty Law Center Legal Director, said at the Georgia Capitol during a press conference.

In the lawsuit, the groups claim that the Georgia law, HB 87, is unconstitutional because it interferes with federal immigration law.  The law also promotes racial profiling, according to critics.

“By perpetuating the hate rhetoric that has become commonplace among many elected officials, this law threatens the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike by encouraging racial profiling.  Sadly, too, it places Georgia on the wrong side of history,” Bauer said.

Georgia became the third state to pass legislation similar to Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 law, which forces law enforcement officials to question the immigration status of anyone they detain during routine stops.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed the bill into law last month and it is slated to be enacted on July 1.

“Georgia’s law is fundamentally un-American: We are not a ‘show me your papers’ country, nor one that believes in making certain people ‘untouchables’ that others should be afraid to assist, house or transport,” Omar Jadwat, staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said.

Prior court rulings involving Arizona and Utah—the second state to enact immigration legislation in the past year—may be indicative of the Georgia law’s fate.

“The courts have blocked Arizona’s and Utah’s laws from going into effect. Georgia should be prepared for the same outcome,” Jadwat said on Thursday.

References:

• Fox News
• Atlanta Progressive News

[Photo By Nevele Otseog]