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Really, I'm sure you are shocked.
Report Says Immigration Agents Broke Laws and Agency Rules in Home 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 study by the school's Immigration Justice Law Clinic, backed by several law enforcement experts including Nassau County's police commissioner, found a widespread pattern of misconduct by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement after analyzing 700 arrest reports obtained from the agency through Freedom of Information lawsuits.
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.
Acting without judicial search warrants, the agents were required to obtain informed consent from a resident before they entered a private residence. But the study found that in 86 percent of the Nassau and Suffolk County arrest reports that it analyzed, and a quarter of the New Jersey cases, no consent was recorded.
Warrants? We don't need no stinking warrants!
The report said a similar "cowboy mentality" emerged in many other raids. In Paterson, N.J., last year, legal residents from Guatemala and their 9-year-old son, a United States citizen, were threatened with guns by immigration agents who had entered their home while the boy's mother was in the shower.
In a Staten Island case, an immigration judge recently ruled that the conduct of agents acting without a warrant was an "egregious violation" of fundamental fairness; they had entered a man's bedroom armed with pistols, "forced him into the hall and required him to stand in his underwear before his brother, sister-in-law and their children."
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!"
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.
Yeehaw! |
