WNY woman says she was detained despite being legal resident
SUIT: HER 36 HOURS IN HELL
Monday, June 16, 2008
By LYSA CHEN
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
They came in the night, pounded on the windows and doors and took her away.

This was the cold, hard, and painful reality for North Bergen resident Maria Argueta on Jan. 29, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained her for 36 hours - despite her being a legal resident - according to a lawsuit she and 12 other plaintiffs filed in April.
The 13 plaintiffs are accusing ICE of Fourth Amendment violations and are seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

They also have a heavy-hitter on their side: U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez.

Argueta's case is only one example of "abusive law enforcement" used to control U.S. borders, Menendez said in a telephone interview Friday.

"What they have to do is have a policy that says, 'We ask questions first and shoot later,'" Menendez said. "Unless that happens, we would be willing to accept as collateral damage the rights of the Constitution of United States citizens, and I don't think we're willing to accept that in pursuit of immigration laws."

Argueta, who has maintained valid Temporary Protection Status since 2001, was awakened Jan. 29 around 4:30 a.m. by ICE agents banging loudly on the doors and windows of her ground-floor North Bergen apartment, the lawsuit claims.

"She was really afraid and didn't want to let anyone in," said Bassina Farbenblum of the Seton Hall Center for Social Justice, which filed the lawsuit.

Argueta's basement neighbors opened the door for the agents, and called their landlord, who is Argueta's brother, the lawsuit claims. The agents were looking for a male criminal, so Argueta let them inside her apartment.

Once inside, the agents asked Argueta about her immigration status, and when Argueta presented her Temporary Protection Status documents, they tossed them aside without looking at them, the suit alleges.

According to the lawsuit, Argueta was taken to a detention center in Elizabeth, where agents mocked her with a popular Latino song "Maria Has Gone," and was later transferred to a Newark facility, where she was held for nearly 36 hours. Argueta was held without food or water for the first 24 hours after her arrest, the lawsuit claims.

Harold Ort, a spokesman for ICE's Newark office, said he could not comment on pending litigation, but said ICE agents are "very, very professional."

"Contrary to what you may hear and contrary to what you may read, our officers are extremely good at what they do," Ort said. "We are charged with upholding the law, and I think we do that in a stellar fashion."



http://www.nj.com/news/jjournal/northbe ... xml&coll=3