'We don’t want this to happen to anybody': Latinos profiled by cops win settlement, policy changes
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania has announced that it has settled a 2019 lawsuit that alleged state police ethnically profiled Latino residents, who were then illegally detained for questioning by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). One person targeted by Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) was a U.S. citizen, PBS affiliate WHYY reported in 2019.
These were not isolated incidents: While ten plaintiffs were ultimately part of the litigation, the ACLU of Pennsylvania said the ensuing investigation in fact revealed “a larger pattern and practice of PSP troopers acting as enforcers of the complex system of federal civil immigration laws.”
“The reason we filed this lawsuit is because we don’t want this to happen to anybody else,” said Rebecca Castro, the U.S. citizen harassed by police. “The police don’t know how many lives they affect on a daily basis. We hope our victory means that this will never happen again.”
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“In 2018, Ms. Castro was driving with her now-husband and a co-worker in York County when a Pennsylvania State Police trooper pulled over the vehicle and began to interrogate the group because the vehicle ‘looked suspicious,’” the ACLU of Pennsylvania said. “The trooper wrongfully detained Ms. Castro and her passengers for several hours, interrogating them on the side of the road about their immigration status and detaining them until ICE officers arrived.“
While it appears that Castro was able to go home, WHYY reported that both her husband and coworker were put into deportation proceedings.
Under the settlement, PSP will pay the plaintiffs $865,000, which advocates said includes compensation and attorneys’ fees. But the settlement will also implement policy changes to help prevent further racial profiling, the ACLU of Pennsylvania said. Under the new PSP policy, “prolonging stops for the purposes of civil immigration enforcement is prohibited,” “running immigration checks when verifying a driver’s or passenger’s identification is no longer permitted,” and immigration detainers not signed by a judge “cannot legally justify extending a traffic stop.”
”PSP also agreed to implement more robust reporting and data-collection requirements, which will allow us to ensure they are in fact following the new policy,” ACLU of Pennsylvania continued.
“Police officers who take it upon themselves to try and enforce immigration law are continuing a long legacy of harmful policing that must be challenged at every turn,” said ACLU of Pennsylvania Executive Director Reggie Shuford. “We are pleased that the state police will be addressing the problem, but other Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies should be on notice that, if they violate the law and attempt to enforce civil immigration law, they too can count on getting sued.”
The lawsuit and settlement (at cost to state taxpayers) add to the case for why the Biden administration should end 287(g) agreements, which only encourage racial profiling by allowing local law enforcement to act as mass deportation agents.
“An investigation by the Department of Justice concluded that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona engaged in a pattern and practice of constitutional violations, including racial profiling of Latinos, after entering a 287(g) agreement,” the American Immigration Council wrote in a 2020 report. Maricopa County, of course, was ground zero of former sheriff Joe Arpaio’s racist campaign against brown and Black people.
Sheriffs have in fact campaigned on, and won, on ending these racist 287(g) agreements. Advocates in Georgia said that in the time since Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens ended the area’s agreement, immigrant families “have been able to breathe easier,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
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