Thread: illegal aliens = racial profiling by U.S. BP?

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/stat ... iling.html

By Andrew Glazer
ASSOCIATED PRESS

5:08 p.m. May 31, 2006

LOS ANGELES – A civil rights lawyer on Wednesday demanded authorities investigate a roundup of hundreds of undocumented immigrants in what he called a desert dragnet based on racial profiling. In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, attorney Luis Carrillo claimed U.S. Border Patrol agents only pulled over people with brown skin in the five-day operation known as “Operation Desert Denial.”
More than 600 undocumented immigrants were detained from May 19 to May 24 along Interstate 40 near Barstow.
No light-skinned people were detained, Carrillo said.

“They gave people with blue eyes and light skin a free pass,” he said.

Carrillo also criticized authorities for focusing efforts far from the border. He said he did not plan to file a lawsuit against the Border Patrol.

Tamara Faulkner, a spokeswoman for the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, said she was not aware of Carrillo's demand for an investigation and declined to comment.

Carl L. McClafferty, chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol division that handled the operation, said in a written statement that authorities were targeting a human smuggling route for immigrants who had crossed into Arizona and Texas from Mexico.

The statement said officers only pulled over vehicles that looked suspicious, but it did not reveal what criteria was used to make that determination.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Martha Silva refused further comment.

At a news conference, Carrillo introduced a child of a woman who was detained and deported. He called the girl “a victim of this harassment.”

Teary-eyed, 12-year-old Wendy Ortiz said she and her two younger brothers were awakened by Border Patrol agents who shone a spotlight into a car being driven by her mother Violeta then bumped it and pulled it over.

The sixth-grader said the family had been traveling overnight to Barstow from their Phoenix home to buy wholesale kitchen supplies.

After determining that Violeta Ortiz was not a legal immigrant, the agents shouted at her and threatened to separate her from the children unless she waived a hearing and signed an order that led to her deportation to Mexico, the girl said.

“She didn't want to hear any more screaming, so she just signed,” said Wendy Ortiz, who like her 7-year-old brother Jose and 4-year-old brother Miguel was born in this country.

The children are now staying with an aunt in Los Angeles.

oooo...they're too far away from the border??? ooooooo
They're 'profiling' people who look suspicious?? ooooooooooooo

They deported an illegal?? ooooooooo They left the kids?? damn

MJ

Carrillo also criticized authorities for focusing efforts far from the border. He said he did not plan to file a lawsuit against the Border Patrol.

What an idiot. He is not going to file a law suit about distance from the border because stopping people in inland areas has been going on for years. I lived out West. I have seen Border Patrol set-up temp. stations way distance from the border for years. Also, Border Patrol agents are federal agents. They have all of the arrest powers of a US Marshal anywhere in the USA....regardless of any State boundary.