Thread: How traffic stops lead to deportation for some Nashville immigrants

How traffic stops lead to deportation for some Nashville immigrants

5:05 a.m. CT March 23, 2017 | Updated 11 hours ago



Sitting on the left side of the Nashville courtroom, one woman asks another in Spanish what she's there for. Some tap their legs nervously. A translator walks out to ask if anyone has received a driver's license since the police officer first pulled them over.

No one has.

Early Tuesday mornings, nearly everyone on the left side of the courtroom is Hispanic, and they are all there for the same thing.

Proof of U.S. citizenship or legal residence is required for Tennesseans who wish to obtain a driver's license or state ID. So, while remaining in the country without a legal status is not a criminal offense under the law, driving without a legal status is.

Metro police officers do not arrest people based on their immigration status alone, city officials said.

But records from police and the Davidson County Sheriff's Office obtained by The Tennessean show that discretionary arrests made by the Metro Nashville Police Department of foreign nationals for not having a driver's license can represent the beginning of the deportation pipeline for some.

Both citing and arresting people for not having a driver's license is optional in Tennessee, along with a few other misdemeanor offenses. Hispanic people were charged, booked and fingerprinted on at least 9,709 occasions solely for not having a driver's license, according to an analysis of police records from October 2014 to October 2016.

The records distinguish between Hispanic and non-Hispanic, a box officers tick off when they fill out citations based on their best observation, according to police.

At least 127 of those people were ultimately investigated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to sheriff's office records from the same time period.

While most Hispanic Nashvillians have not entered the nation illegally, the majority of those who have entered illegally are Hispanic, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center report, which estimates nearly 80 percent of those living in the U.S. without a legal status are from Latin America — primarily Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

“Unlike states like California and Illinois, Tennessee does not offer a driver certificate for unauthorized immigrants. We briefly had one in the last decade, but it was quickly repealed after public outcry," Nashville Mayor Megan Barry said. “Driving without a license is a criminal offense in Tennessee, and our police officers enforce Tennessee state law."

When Metro police bring someone to jail, they are fingerprinted, and that information is automatically shared with immigration officials. ICE will then submit a voluntary "detainer" request asking the sheriff's office to hold a person of interest for 48 hours longer than otherwise required by law.

There are around 33,000 people living in Nashville without a legal status, according to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. The number of people who use a car as their primary means of transportation is unknown, but Nashville is often difficult to navigate without one.

Mary Kathryn Harcombe, a public defender in Nashville, said more than 100 non-citizens appear for the misdemeanor citation docket in courtroom 1A each week on average and that at least 90 percent of them were charged with not having a driver's license.

Harcombe spends half her time running the Public Defender’s Office’s New Americans Project, where she advises clients and colleagues on how the outcome of a someone's criminal case affects their immigration status.

While some of those who entered the country illegally and later arrested by police and held by the sheriff's office for immigration authorities had a criminal record, others did not. They were initially stopped for failing to turn their headlights on, playing loud music, running a stop sign or speeding, the records show. A large number of people were arrested multiple times for not having a driver's license, paying hundreds of dollars in fines, Davidson County court records show.

For example, one man was held for ICE after Nashville police charged him for not having a driver's license on three separate occasions, according to court records. At least 13 different men, all named Jose Estrada, have been charged over several years with not having a driver's license, some of them on multiple occasions.

Nearly 60 percent of drivers arrested for charges that included not having a driver's license were Hispanic, according to Metro police records. Meanwhile, U.S. Census data puts Nashville's Hispanic population at 10 percent of the total.

Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said police do not stop Hispanics at disproportionate rates, but they do arrest a higher percentage of Hispanic drivers as the result of traffic stops when compared to non-Hispanic drivers, mostly for driver's license-related charges.

In 2015, while Hispanic drivers were arrested on 24 percent of stops, police arrested black drivers in 10 percent of vehicle stops and white drivers 5 percent of the time, Aaron said.

The mayor said she wishes the state offered a driver's certificate for unauthorized immigrants.

"I think Nashville and Tennessee would be safer if all drivers were certified, and that we never should’ve repealed the driver certificate, but that is not within my control as mayor," she said.

​During her campaign in 2015, Barry, along with all six other mayoral candidates, said she supported a municipal ID card to help the city's unauthorized immigrant residents, homeless and others who tend to lack traditional government-issued identification, but such a program has not materialized.

Issuing a citation for not having a driver's license is not mandatory for Nashville police officers, who are primarily concerned with "the use of assumed or fictitious names by arrested persons," a memo sent to officers in 2014 states. Police are allowed to accept foreign consular IDs as a form of identification. The mayor said that's done to limit the amount of physical arrests required for offenses that don’t endanger the public.

But records show that even when immigrants show police their official consular ID cards, they are sometimes arrested.

One man failed to make a complete stop in February 2016, according to his arrest affidavit. His Mexican consular ID was deemed insufficient proof of identity and he was arrested, according to the affidavit. Another was placed under arrest weeks later after a police officer stopped him for having a license plate that was not lit correctly. The driver turned over his Guatemalan consular ID card, but the officer still arrested him.

Police can also accept a foreign passport so long as it has a valid entry stamp. An immigrant who crosses the border illegally would not posses such a stamp.

Barry said that the number of people held for ICE represented a small percentage of the total arrested and an even smaller portion of the total charged. Police say only 10 percent of those charged with not having a driver's license were immediately taken to jail.

But even when drivers are only issued a citation, they must still go to the courthouse, where ICE agents can and have appeared to arrest those without a legal immigration status, according to Harcombe.

"There was definitely the perception in the immigrant community that there was an ICE presence in the courthouse," she said.

Under the Trump Administration and the Department of Homeland Security's sweeping new enforcement plan, all immigrants who entered the country illegally or overstayed their legal visas are at risk of deportation, and ICE agents are again empowered to pick people up after they were arrested by local law enforcement on any charge.

While many have called on the sheriff's office to stop honoring the detainer requests unless they are accompanied by a judicial warrant, spokeswoman Karla West recently said the Davidson County Sheriff's Office will continue to honor them. She said they may change their policy if there's an increase in requests from ICE.

Proponents of the intensified enforcement measures frequently argue that anyone who originally entered the country illegally should be deported, but Harcombe said pulling off mass deportations is not only operationally unrealistic, it's overkill.

It is not a criminal offense to remain in the country unlawfully, but rather a violation punishable by civil penalties. Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor offense. But criminal law and immigration law are separate, so those in the country without a legal status could still be subject to deportation.

"In the United States we have a spectrum of laws. For example, you have driving without a license, which is a misdemeanor, and you have murder, which is an A-felony," she said. "Those are both crimes. If you break either of them you are subject to punishment under the criminal system. But they have very different penalties.

"Deportation is like taking someone who’s driven without a license and locking them up for 10 years."

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news...ants/98970110/

"Deportation is like taking someone who’s driven without a license and locking them up for 10 years."

Oh what school did you go to, Stupid Person? Deportation is sending you home where you belong. It has nothing to do with "locking them up". We should lock you up for being so stupid.