This has been going on for years. We have numerous articles in our archives re this case.
~~~

Posted: Thursday, March 20, 2014 2:00 am

By Danielle E. Gaines News-Post Staff

A legal case that began with deputies questioning a Hispanic woman who was eating a sandwich could be heard in the Supreme Court of the United States.

The high court will consider Friday whether to hear Frederick County’s challenge to a federal appeals court decision that deputies may not detain or arrest a person based solely on a civil violation of immigration law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit opinion was released in August in response to a discrimination lawsuit filed by Salvadoran native Roxana Orellana Santos against the Frederick County Board of County Commissioners, Sheriff Chuck Jenkins and two deputies.

On Oct. 7, 2008, Santos was eating lunch outside her workplace, the Common Market, when the two deputies saw her, stopped their car and questioned her about her immigration status, even though she had broken no laws, her attorneys have said.

The encounter was consensual until one of the deputies gestured for her to sit back down while they attempted to verify whether a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement civil warrant for “immediate deportation” in her name was still active, the Court of Appeals wrote.

Santos challenged whether she could have been detained without probable cause that she was engaged in criminal activity and whether the deputies had the authority to arrest her on a civil, not criminal, warrant.

She was jailed for 37 days before being released under the supervision of immigration authorities, according to court records.

The appeals court concluded that the deputies violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment when they detained her without probable cause. Further, knowledge that someone is the subject of a civil, rather than criminal, deportation warrant does not establish probable cause for an arrest, the court wrote.

Attorneys for the county filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court on Dec. 9, according to online court records.

The county is asking the high court to consider the case for a number of reasons, citing the national importance of the appellate ruling and what the county argues are inconsistent decisions on immigration issues throughout the appellate courts.

Without guidance from the Supreme Court, differences in appellate rulings mean “the ability of local police to assist ICE by making immigration arrests will vary widely from state to state and be fraught with doubt,” the petition states.

Attorneys for the county also argue that requiring deputies to distinguish between civil and criminal warrants while on patrol is unsustainable and frustrates national efforts at immigration enforcement by confusing local police about who can be lawfully detained.

There is no evidence that the deputies were able to tell that the warrant for Santos was civil or criminal at the time of her arrest, the petition states.

By prohibiting state and local police from making immigration arrests on civil warrants, the 4th Circuit would make it impossible for police to assist in detaining suspected terrorists who overstay their visas, the county’s petition argues.

One such example is Ziad Jarrah, a 9/11 hijacker who was stopped for speeding on I-95 in Maryland two days before the terrorist attacks. If the trooper had a reasonable suspicion that Jarrah was in the country illegally, he could have called ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center 24-hour hotline and possibly detained him, the petition states.

“No matter how much the federal authorities might have wanted Jarrah detained, the 4th Circuit holds that the state trooper would not have been able to detain Jarrah to briefly contact ICE for direction,” the county’s petition states.

In their brief opposing the petition, Santos’ attorneys called the county’s invocation of terrorism “especially fanciful and inappropriate” because Jarrah’s encounter with police can be distinguished from the Santos case.

Unlike Santos, Jarrah was pulled over for a traffic violation, which provided a basis for a short stop and questions about his identity and his immigration status, the brief states.

“Ms. Orellana Santos is just a mother trying to provide a good life for her children in this country,” the brief states. “She is not even close to the types of immigration law violators that the federal government typically seeks to use its limited resources to remove from this country.”

Santos’ attorneys also argued that a “split” between the circuits is overstated in the county’s petition and that the appellate court decisions address various narrow facets of federal immigration law.

The county’s argument that there will be uncertainty in law enforcement because of the appellate decision is “more hyperbolic bluster than reality,” Santos’ attorneys wrote.

The brief also states that some police agencies have already undertaken efforts to keep officers from making arrests based solely on civil immigration violations and have explained to officers how to distinguish civil and criminal warrants in the national database.

The case is scheduled for discussion at the private conference of the justices Friday.

Generally, if a case is considered at a conference, the disposition of the case will be announced at 9:30 a.m. the following Monday, according to the court.

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/new...ed99d2c79.html