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Report: ICE Agents Broke Rules and Law in Conducting Immigration Raids

By Jeralyn

A report by the Immigration Justice Law Clinic at Benjamin Cardozo law school has found, based on a review of 700 arrest reports, that immigration agents broke the law and the constitution in conducting immigration raids.

Armed federal immigration agents have illegally pushed and shoved their way into homes in New York and New Jersey in hundreds of predawn raids that violated their own agency rules as well as the Constitution, according to a study to be released on Wednesday by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

...The raids were supposed to focus on dangerous criminals, but overwhelmingly netted Latinos with civil immigration violations who happened to be present, the study said. Raiders mistakenly held legal residents and citizens by force in their own homes while agents rummaged through drawers seeking incriminating documents, the report said.

[More...]

Nassau Police Commissioner Lawrence W. Mulvey who "led a panel guiding the report" said:

“If any local law enforcement agency in the nation were involved in these types of widespread constitutional violations it would prompt a federal investigation....Federal immigration agents simply need to play by the same rules as every other law enforcement officer.”

The report criticizes the agents' "cowboy mentality."

In an e-mail message obtained under a Freedom of Information request, a federal immigration agent in Connecticut invited a state trooper to join a scheduled set of raids in New Haven, writing: “We have 18 addresses — so it should be a fun time! Let me know if you guys can play!”

Racial profiling is also an issue:

The report also found a strong suggestion of racial profiling in the difference between the ethnicity of the named targets — 66 percent Latino — and of the “collateral” arrests — 87 percent Latino in New Jersey and 94 percent on Long Island.

Maybe their quotas have something to do with it?

Such concerns have surfaced repeatedly around the country in news articles and lawsuits since 2006, when the Bush administration raised the arrest quota of each raiding team eightfold, to 1,000 a year.

The report says Janet Napolitano eliminated the quotas but more needs to be done:

As for recommendations for the future:

Home raids should be “a tactic of last resort, reserved for high-priority targets,” and then only after agents have obtained judicial warrants, the report urged. A high-level supervisor should be on site, and home raids should be videotaped, it recommended.

Agents should have to note why they initially seized and questioned any person, the study said. “That’s the bread and butter of any arrest report,” said Peter L. Markowitz, who teaches at Cardozo and is one of the report’s authors. Such a note was missing from two-thirds of the arrest reports analyzed in the study.

ICE responded to the report with a vanilla statement defending the agents' actions.

"The men and women of I.C.E. are sworn to uphold the laws of our nation,” the agency said in an e-mailed statement. “We do so professionally, humanely and with an acute awareness with the impact enforcement has on the individuals we encounter. While I.C.E. prioritizes our efforts by targeting fugitives who have demonstrated a threat to national security or public safety, we have a clear mandate to pursue all immigration fugitives."

The spokesman is the same as under Bush. The Obama Administration has not replaced him.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 22, 2009 (boomark / email).