Lawsuit over immigration raid tactics expands
Last update: July 26, 2007 – 9:45 PM

Thirty-three Willmar-area residents have become additional plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging immigration agents' tactics in the southwestern Minnesota town last spring, attorneys announced Thursday.
Seventeen adults and 16 minor children were added to the list of plaintiffs in a suit filed earlier this year, charging immigration officials with unlawful search and seizure during four days of raids at homes and workplaces last April, said Gloria Contreras-Edin, executive director of Centro Legal in St. Paul.

There are now 53 plaintiffs, she said, and nearly half are legal U.S. residents and/or U.S. citizens.

Likewise Centro Legal added several new defendants in addition to federal immigration officials, she said. They include the Kandiyohi County sheriff and the police chief of the town of Atwater.

The lawsuit charges that agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to show search warrants, forced their way into homes and engaged in racial profiling when they interrogated city residents.

Immigration officials say that the tactics were legal, and that they didn't need search warrants because they entered homes with the residents' consent.

http://www.startribune.com/crime/story/1327467.html