[Pnews] Immigration police pilot ‘stop and frisk€™’-style raids in New Orleans

[Prisoner News]

  Immigration police pilot ‘stop and frisk€™’-style raids in New Orleans

by Paul Abowd <http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/a/paul-abowd.html> 
January 29, 2014 6:44PM ET
*http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/29/immigration-policepilotastopandfriskastyleraidsinneworleans.html*

In the fight to keep an immigrant family together, workers’ center 
uncovers a little-known deportation initiative

Federal agents have quietly launched a program aimed at deporting 
undocumented immigrants who have violent criminal records.

The Criminal Alien Removal Initiative, or CARI, has sparked immigration 
raids at grocery stores, Bible study groups and parks where immigration 
agents handcuff and fingerprint suspects on the spot.

The raids have created "a terrifying effect," said Jacinta Gonzalez, an 
organizer with the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, which 
authored a December report exposing the program 
<http://nowcrj.org/press-releases/report-alarming-rise-of-race-based-immigration-raids-in-new-orleans-121913/>. “We 
haven’t seen raids with this magnitude, this intensity and this 
technology in other parts of the country.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, says the CARI program is 
narrowly focused on apprehending violent criminals who are a risk to 
public safety. ICE touted these efforts in 2013, saying that 82 percent 
<http://www.ice.gov/removal-statistics/> of the people it deported from 
inside the country last year had a criminal record.

The Workers' Center report, however, called CARI a “stop and frisk” 
program for the immigrant community that is actively separating families.


    Picked up at day care

Erlin San Martin was leaving his house to pick up his 2-year-old son at 
day care when two plainclothes immigration agents approached him last 
September.

The agents had one question for the 27-year-old Honduran immigrant.

“They wanted to know if I had ID, which made me very nervous,” said San 
Martin.

The agents handcuffed him, led him to an ICE vehicle and scanned his 
fingerprints with a mobile biometrics unit that searches immigration and 
criminal databases.

ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said that San Martin was targeted because he had 
been deported once before, in 2006.

He added that CARI determines its targets "based on the totality of an 
individual's public safety threat, beyond their status as an immigration 
fugitive."

But San Martin did not have a history of violent crime.

Nonetheless, he was put in the back of an ICE vehicle, where he would 
stay for several hours.

“My feet were shackled, and I was handcuffed from 5 in the afternoon to 
10 at night,” said San Martin.

During that time, he said, the agents stopped for a meal, met with other 
ICE officers and then drove around New Orleans arresting people until 
the vehicle was full.

“I heard one of the agents say to another, ‘This is like going 
hunting,’” said San Martin. “And the other responded, ‘Yeah, I like this 
s---.’”

San Martin was taken to ICE headquarters in downtown New Orleans. Agents 
removed his leg shackles but not his handcuffs. He was finally allowed 
to call his wife.

He said he asked the immigration agents if they had kids. They said yes, 
but that their kids were from the United States.

It turns out that San Martin and the agents had something in common. 
Christopher San Martin was born in the U.S. two years ago, after Erlin 
arrived to take a construction job in New Orleans.


    CARI program revealed

While San Martin was locked in a detention facility for a month, the 
Workers' Center requested that ICE use discretion to keep him in the 
country with his family.

ICE denied the request in October, but its response 
<https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_nw3oV2SYs0WVZQT1pxODdPa0E/edit> also 
revealed that San Martin had been arrested under the Criminal Alien 
Removal Initiative. It was the first public acknowledgment of the CARI 
program.

CARI is a nationwide effort that began in May 2012 when ICE boosted the 
number of immigration “fugitive operations teams” in field offices like 
New Orleans by 25 percent.

ICE officials told Al Jazeera in an email that CARI “focuses ICE’s 
limited enforcement resources on identifying, arresting and removing 
at-large criminal aliens who pose a risk to community safety.”

But agents are also arresting people like San Martin for violating prior 
deportation orders — even if those people have U.S. citizen children and 
no violent criminal record.

San Martin has won an “order of supervision,” which allows him to live 
with his family until immigration officials make a final ruling on his 
deportation case.


    Taking prints

ICE agents in New Orleans use mobile fingerprinting devices 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-f_aBKxeRQ> similar to those used by 
the U.S. military during its “counterinsurgency” campaigns in Iraq and 
Afghanistan 
<http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/08/31/questions_arise_about_use_of_data_gathered_in_iraq_war/>.

“These machines were intended for war situations,” said the Workers' 
Center's Gonzalez. “And now they’re being used in the streets of New 
Orleans.”

ICE has used the mobile "IDENT" units for nearly 10 years. In an email, 
ICE officials called them an “invaluable resource” that “allowed ICE to 
exercise discretion for 75 percent of individuals scanned” in New Orleans.

The Workers' Center wants to know why so many innocent individuals are 
handcuffed and fingerprinted in the first place.

“This is exactly what the Constitution prohibits,” said J.J. Rosenbaum, 
a lawyer for the center.

New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice

An ICE official spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity about 
allegations of racial profiling. The official maintained that CARI raids 
go after specific criminal suspects, but that immigration agents also 
handcuff and fingerprint people in the area around that suspect.

“We may scan people in the immediate vicinity because that makes sense 
to do,” the official said. “We want to make sure that there’s nobody 
else there that might be a violent criminal.”


    Internal emails

The CARI program was established the same month that ICE officials were 
pushing for an increase in deportations of criminals, according to 
emails obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina 
<https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_nw3oV2SYs0ZzlKMVBJNjN6Njg/edit>. The 
internal documents from April and May 2012 show ICE officials in 
Washington, D.C., pushing the agency's field offices to increase 
removals of "criminal aliens."

In an email, David Venturella, the assistant director of ICE field 
operations in D.C., informed agents in Atlanta that they were “1,200 
criminal removals under when compared to last year.” He added, “The only 
performance measure that will count this fiscal year is the criminal 
alien removal target.”

Venturella later left his post to become an executive at GEO Group 
<https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=78082>, one of 
the largest owners of immigration detention facilities in the country.

In New Orleans, CARI raids slowed after a November protest that saw 
immigrants’ rights activists block rush-hour traffic outside ICE’s 
headquarters 
<http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/2013/11/14/new-orleans-congress-of-day-laborers-sitting-in-at-ice-right-now/> for 
three hours. Several undocumented immigrants were arrested in the 
civil-disobedience action demanding an end to the CARI program.

But the raids have picked up again, according to Gonzalez.

“They will raid a house looking for one person, but subject everyone in 
the house to fingerprints,” she said.

ICE’s home raids have been the subject of legal challenges. In a 
class-action suit 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/nyregion/us-agrees-to-set-new-rules-for-immigration-raids.html?_r=0> that 
was settled last April, immigrant families in New York alleged that ICE 
agents had entered their homes unlawfully. The suit culminated in a $1 
million settlement that also required ICE to change its practice of 
entering private residences without consent.

ICE recently raided a home in New Orleans, arrested a pregnant woman and 
placed her in deportation proceedings, said Gonzalez. The woman has no 
criminal history. Instead, she came under ICE scrutiny after calling the 
police to report that her car had been broken into.

“How pregnant women are a priority for removal at this moment is beyond 
me,” said Gonzalez.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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