Lawsuit Charging Sheriff Arpaio Illegally Targeted Latinos In Maricopa County Can Go Forward

SOURCE: Candela A.from Phoenix

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 11, 2009

CONTACT:

Alessandra Soler Meetze, ACLU of Arizona, (602) 650-1854 ext. 106 (office) or 602-418-5499 (cell)

Maria Archuleta, ACLU National, (212) 519-7808 or 549-2666; media@aclu.org

Laura Rodriguez, MALDEF, (310) 956-2425; lrodriguez@maldef.org

Jamie Moss, Steptoe & Johnson LLP, (201) 493-1027; newsPRos@aol.com

PHOENIX – A federal court ruled that a class action lawsuit charging that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio illegally profiled Latinos can proceed.

In July 2008, five individuals and Somos America, a Latino community-based coalition, sued Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) and Maricopa County, claiming that they or their members were unlawfully stopped and mistreated by law enforcement agents because they were Latino. The county asked the U.S. District Court in Arizona to dismiss the lawsuit in October, but today’s ruling clears the way for the lawsuit to go forward.

The court recognized that a Latino appearance is of “little or no use” in determining which individuals should be stopped by law enforcement seeking "illegal aliens," and that reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation does not justify questioning of drivers or passengers about immigration status.

“At stake in this case is a matter of acute public importance. Law enforcement practices that target a group based on the color of their skin have no place in America ,” said Peter Kozinets, an attorney at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Phoenix who argued the case. “This is a critical step in protecting the rights of all people in this country.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Arizona, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and lead counsel Steptoe & Johnson LLP are representing the five individuals and Somos America and charge that the policies and practices of Arpaio and the county are discriminatory and unlawfully violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Arizona Constitution. The amended lawsuit builds upon an earlier complaint filed in December 2007.

“We’re encouraged that the sheriff’s office’s practice of targeting people simply because of the color of their skin can now be fully examined in a court of law,” said ACLU of Arizona Legal Director Dan Pochoda, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. “Sheriff Arpaio’s discriminatory policies have no place in a free country. We do not want to live in a place where you can be stopped for no reason and asked for ‘your papers please.’”

Arpaio has launched a series of so-called “crime suppression sweeps” in Maricopa County in Latino neighborhoods and in areas where Latinos work as day laborers. Maricopa County residents and local officials alike have complained that the conduct of the sheriff and his office go well beyond the scope of the MCSO's legal authority and often results in the harassment of Latinos.

“We are very pleased that this important case will be heard,” said MALDEF staff attorney Kristina Campbell. “In America we value fairness and equality, but Sheriff Arpaio’s sweeps have resulted in the harassment of Latinos and violated their civil rights. There’s nothing fair about that.”

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has denounced Sheriff Arpaio and last April, after the MCSO engaged in sweeps in the town of Guadalupe, Gordon formally requested that former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey launch a Justice Department investigation into Sheriff Arpaio's and the MCSO's "discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests" of Latino persons in Maricopa County. Gordon has also publicly stated that the sweeps are interfering with the work of undercover city police officers and federal agents.

Lawyers on the case, Ortega Melendres, et al. v. Arpaio, et al., include Mónica Ramírez of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project; Pochoda of the ACLU of Arizona; Campbell and Nancy Ramirez of MALDEF; and Kozinets, David Bodney, Karen Hartman-Tellez and Isaac Hernandez of Steptoe & Johnson LLP.

Today’s ruling is online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/38709lgl20090210.html

The complaint is online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/35998lgl20080716.html

The letter from Mayor Gordon to Attorney General Mukasey is online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/35981res20080404.html

More information about the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project is online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/index.html

More information about Steptoe & Johnson LLP is online at: www.steptoe.com

Alessandra Soler Meetze

Executive Director

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona

P.O. Box 17148

Phoenix, AZ 85011-0148

T: 602-773-6006 (direct)

T: 602-650-1854 ext. 106

F: 602-650-1376

Visit us on the web at: www.acluaz.org

Shades of Shameful Past in Anti-Immigrant Agenda

SOURCE:

SOMOS AMERICA / WE ARE AMERICA COALITION

24-10-2008

Shades of shameful past in anti-immigrant agenda

By Peter Schrag

Article Launched: 12/31/2007 01:38:55 AM PST

Who said this?

"Immigration to this country is increasing and is making its greatest relative increase from races most alien to the body of the American people and from the lowest and most illiterate classes among those races . . . half of whom have no occupation and most of whom represent the rudest form of labor.

"The immigrants who come to the United States reduce the rate of wages by ruinous competition, and then take their savings out of the country. Home as a foreign country. . . . They have no interest or stake in country and never become American citizens." Many, he went on, are genetically prone to crime, insanity and disease.

The author, in a pair of articles on "The Restriction of Immigration" for The Atlantic magazine in 1891, was Rep. (later Sen.) Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. His undesirables were Jews, Italians, Poles and Hungarians, people like GOP Rep. Tom Tancredo's Sicilian great-grandparents. In those days, of course, everybody was undocumented.

So you can say that the current debate among GOP candidates Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney about who would be the meanest, toughest guy on illegal immigration is in an American tradition almost as old as immigration itself.

The tradition goes back to the Salem witch trials - and "No Irish Need Apply" and "The Chinese Must Go," and "Japs keep moving." Not all of it was overtly racist. The official targets of the Great Red Scare of the 1920s were communists and anarchists,

although most of them also happened to be Italian immigrants. And there was, of course, the pursuit of communists, alleged communists and "fellow travelers" in the 1950s, and the blacklists and loyalty oaths that came with it. Americans were encouraged (and often pressured) to denounce colleagues and associates they suspected. Hollywood producers, politicians and university trustees, including the regents of the University of California, folded under the pressure. Many of the blacklisted never recovered.

The present furor about illegal immigrants isn't quite like any of those things. But the attempt to exploit anti-immigrant rage and fear by politicians such as Romney and Giuliani and by the radio talkers that thrive on the issue comes awfully close.

Some Republicans, Karl Rove probably included, are tearing their hair. Rove and his former boss, George W. Bush, worked hard to appeal to the growing body of Latino voters. But like John McCain, they got ripped for their sponsorship of the comprehensive immigration reform bill that got filibustered to death by hard-liners last June.

And now that immigration is again a hot-button issue, Romney and Giuliani, among others, have taken a page from former California Gov. Pete Wilson's old 1994 playbook, trading short-term political gain for disastrous long-term losses in support from the growing ranks of Latino voters. "Some in the party seem pleased," said former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson. "They should be terrified."

Until recently, McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee were the honorable exceptions among the GOP candidates. Huckabee, who got whacked by Romney for backing in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, replied, "In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did." But since then, as he rose in the polls (and read the polls) he's signed on to his own version of the Tancredo creed. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, like Giuliani another recent convert who's read the same polls, is running for cover.

The damage is not only to rational discourse about immigration but also in the futile diversion from the real sources of the real fears - about off-shoring and job security, health care, corporate power and fraud and a long list of fading certainties - that feed the issue. Sooner or later we'll probably look back at this episode with the same embarrassment and shame as we did the others, but it could be an ugly time until we get there.

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