Report Alleges Abuse, Neglect At Evac Centers
POSTED: 11:39 am PDT November 1, 2007
UPDATED: 1:49 pm PDT November 1, 2007

SAN DIEGO -- A group of human-rights activists issued an explosive report in the wake of what they allege to be minority abuse and neglect at firestorm evacuation centers.

The report was issued Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Immigrant Rights Consortium and Justice Overcoming Boundaries.

According to the report, hundreds of people reported incidents to those organizations in which people's civil rights and liberties were abused. The report says that the alleged victims include undocumented immigrants and transients who were unable to furnish authorities with identification. Other examples cited in the report provide details of incidents involving "an extended family with three children arrested and deported for taking more donated goods than someone thought reasonable, [and] a young Filipino volunteer evicted from the stadium for helping evacuees carry donated goods to their vehicles."

The report also states that journalists were denied access to evacuation centers.



Also listed in the report are a series of other alleged incidents at evacuation centers, including the one established at Qualcomm stadium, which, at one point, sheltered more than 10,000 evacuees. According to the report, dozens of families left the stadium in the wake of the arrest and deportation of the family with three young children because they feared deportation. Also in the report are allegations that at least three families told volunteers at a table set up by the Immigrant Rights Consortium that at about midnight on the morning of Oct. 25, San Diego police went through the stadium, waking up families and asking for identification to prove that the people lived in evacuated zones. A volunteer inside the stadium told the groups compiling the report that he witnessed the ID checks and saw people escorted out of the stadium who had requested to be allowed to stay through the night.

IRC officials also maintain that they received more than 12 complaints from people -- including "persons of Mexican or Central American descent ... an African American mother and a Filipino volunteer" -- who thought they had been discriminated against by volunteers.

One example cited in the report involves a family whose members said they had been surrounded by five police officers, who asked them to account for the property inside their vehicle. The reports said that the officers were "implying that they suspected the family of stealing the items."

IRC volunteers also said a mother of Mexican descent who asked for Size 5 diapers was told there were none available and then witnessed a white woman who made the same request get a box of Size 5 diapers. " An American Friends Service Committee volunteer subsequently accompanied her to ask for diapers again; this time, they were given diapers," the report states.

Also in the report is a request by the organizations that in future, officials refrain from conducting ID checks when emergency supplies are being distributed; that, temporarily, immigration laws not be enforced at evacuation centers; that interpreters be made available at those sites; that local leaders make guarantees that all victims can access emergency assistance when necessary; and that a task force be formed to study the relevant issues and implement policies that all members of the community -- victims, volunteers and law enforcement -- would then be made aware of.

NBC 7/39 is trying to contact law enforcement officials to get a response to the report.
http://www.immigrationwatchdog.com/?p=5026