Homeland Security again accused of racial profiling
ICE officials deny the allegations, but they are hard to dismiss out of hand, given the fact that Hispanic federal agents themselves have a class-action discrimination lawsuit pending against the agency. ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which is the massive 200,000-employee bureaucracy created in the wake of 9/11 to safeguard the security of the nation.
The Sun-Sentinel reports the following:
This round of sweeps resurrects old fears of racial profiling among immigrant advocates such as Jose Lagos, head of the Miami-based Honduran Unity, an immigrant advocacy group who says Central Americans are especially vulnerable because many are in the country legally but lack the proper documentation because of immigration backlogs.
"I'm concerned when I hear a woman tell me she was stopped at the Tri-Rail station in Broward and asked for immigration papers, but the other woman who was nearby who was blond and blue-eyed was not asked for identification and it turns out she is Chilean, didn't speak English and wasn't a citizen. It appears they are racially profiling people," Lagos said. "We have people who are here legally and have work visas but haven't received the renewal papers because immigration hasn't sent it to them yet.""Many victims of the immigration sweeps have told us they were racially profiled," said Cheryl Little, director of the Miami-based Florida Immigration Advocacy Center. "They were stopped simply because of the way they looked or the language they spoke or because they had an accent."
Similar accusations of immigrants questioned based on appearance, race or language surfaced (after) Sept. 11, 2001, when FBI agents interviewed thousands of Arabs, Muslims and Hispanics.
Federal officials contend they are color blind, however. From the Sun-Sentinel report:
"The border patrol does board buses, but in no way is racial profiling used as part of our action," said Victor Colon, assistant chief patrol agent for the U.S. Border Patrol (also part of DHS). "The way a person behaves may cause an agent to ask further questions so we do use behavioral indicators, but that is just one factor. We are not targeting anyone, including Haitians."
Similarly other federal agencies also deny such accusation. "It is clear that we do not target anyone based on their race, ethnicity or language," said Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.Federal agents dispute the allegations, saying they are trained to look for a range of indicators, including suspicious behavior.
Those statements, though, seem to fly in the face of the accusations made by ICE Hispanic federal agents themselves. And it is not Hispanic agents alone who are concerned that DHS has a problem with racism.
Narco News reported on the issue this past summer:
The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), which represents some 22,000 federal agents in 50 law enforcement agencies, has directed a letter to Congress in support of Ruben Gonzalez, a high-ranking supervisor within DHS' Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Houston. The letter, addressed to U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, stresses that FLEOA “supports any and all efforts to eliminate bias and inequities in hiring and promotion processes by Federal law enforcement agencies.”
Gonzalez is a catalyst behind the growing chorus of Hispanic agents calling for congressional action on the issue. Gonzalez's attorney, Ron Schmidt, claims the racial discrimination within ICE is so pervasive that it has fostered a dysfunctional agency culture that poses a real threat to national security.
Schmidt is representing a group of some 400 current and former Hispanic federal agents who have filed a class-action discrimination lawsuit against DHS. The litigation alleges that the Hispanic agents have endured a pattern of racial discrimination within ICE -- and its predecessor agency, U.S. Customs -- that has prevented the best and brightest from advancing within the agency. In addition to monetary damages, the Hispanic agents are asking the court to order the government to cease its “illegal and discriminatory conduct," the class-action lawsuit states.The largest federal law enforcement association in the country has thrown its weight behind a call for a congressional inquiry into an alleged pattern of racial discrimination within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Given those facts, the report in the Sun-Sentinel should come as no surprise. If DHS is discriminating against its own Hispanic agents, how big a leap of faith is it to believe that attitude is spilling over to citizens? The problem is made even worse if agency officials are failing to deal with the issue, but rather are content to conduct business as usual.
Again, from the Sun-Sentinel report:
"Officials may say they are not purposefully targeting someone based on racial profile, but in reality this is what appears to be happening," said Robert Vaughan, president of the Caribbean Bar Association.... Advocates insist the increased volume of calls from Haitians and Latinos who repeatedly describe a similar scenario in which agents or local law enforcement question their legal status is raising deep concerns.
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