Hispanics claim racial profiling by officers U.S. Border Patrol, 3 departments named
Posted on 16. Dec, 2009 by Shera Crossan in Business & Finance, Events, Foreign and Domestic Intelligence, Immigration
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Three times in two months, Jose Calderon and Belinda Vega were stopped by a police officer and an immigration officer in Plymouth, Ohio, and their identities questioned – each time with their two young children present and each time with no ticket or citation given. The stops, according to lawyers with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, were not a result of Mr. Calderon’s driving but because of the color of his skin.
The couple was among 12 individuals and two organizations that filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Toledo Thursday alleging racial profiling practices by agents of the U.S. Border Patrol and three northwest Ohio police departments.
The lawsuit requests that the litigation be made into a class- action lawsuit and asks that the court order the federal agents as well as officers in the Ohio communities of Norwalk, Plymouth, and Attica to refrain from stopping Hispanics without probable cause.
The case was assigned to Judge Jack Zouhary.
United States Government Courts Us: Judges Us District Court
1716 Spielbusch Avenue, Toledo, OH 43624
“This affects hundreds if not thousands of people in northern Ohio,” said Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, one of the plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit. “Every Latino knows someone who has dealt with this issue. It impacts in some way 90 percent of the Hispanics in the U.S.”
The examples of unwarranted stops listed in the complaint include a woman stopping for gas, a family driving down the road, and a woman walking her son to school.
All of the men, women, and children were residing in northern Ohio when they were detained and questioned about their immigration status. Both Mr. Heller and Mr. Velasquez declined to say how many of the 12 listed plaintiffs are considered illegal immigrants.
The 39-page lawsuit alleges 13 claims, including violations of the right against unreasonable searches and seizures and the prohibition of the deprivation of liberty without due process. The complaint also alleges a “conspiracy to violate Hispanics’ rights to equal protection under the law.”
“Under the Fourth Amendment these restraints [of liberty] must be justified by reasonable suspicion that the person seized has no right to be or remain in the United States,” the complaint said. “These defendants have conspired to deprive Hispanics of the equal protection of the laws and have in furtherance of that conspiracy restrained and interrogated them because of their Hispanic appearance.” “We believe this has increased dramatically since the opening of the U.S. Border Patrol in Sandusky, Ohio,” said Mark Heller, managing attorney for ABLE\’s Migrant Farmworker and Immigration Program.
The very premise of their claim is racist. If these law enforcement officers were anything but white, I guarantee they would NOT be claiming racial profiling. As for Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, he should be more concerned with the problem of illegal immigration that is caused by his people, as opposed to sitting on the sidelines waiting to take part in a frivolous law suit.