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“Driving while Mexican or Latino”

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(CNN)  Low-income Latinos are routinely discriminated against in the South, a  report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center says.  The study’s author and others say the problem exists nationwide, with millions of Spanish-speaking immigrants living “beyond the protection of the law.”

The report, released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, documents the experiences of 500 immigrants in the South, finding that Latinos routinely are cheated out of wages, are denied basic health protection and fall victim to racial profiling.

“Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South” details stories such as that of a Tennessee woman who says she was jailed at a cheese factory for asking for pay, a bean picker in Alabama who says his life savings were taken by police at a traffic stop, and a rapist in Georgia who was not arrested because the suspect’s victim was an undocumented immigrant.

Forty-one percent of the people surveyed said they had experienced theft of their wages by employers. Forty-seven percent said they know someone who was treated unfairly by police. Seventy-seven percent of women surveyed said they have been sexually harassed by bosses, many saying that bosses used their immigration status as leverage.

“This report documents the human toll of failed policies that relegate millions of people to an underground economy, where they are beyond the protection of the law,” said Mary Bauer, author of the report. “Workplace abuses and racial profiling are rampant in the South.”

But such discrimination is also rampant nationwide, she said. The human-rights law center focused on the South because that’s the area the Montgomery, Alabama-based group knows best, she said.

Teodoro Maus, president of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, has heard thousands of discrimination complaints from Mexican immigrants during the past two decades.

“It’s absolutely correct that there’s generalized discrimination,” he told CNN. “There’s a general feeling that discrimination is valid because these people are illegal, because these people have no right to be here.”

But the attitude toward discrimination has changed throughout the years, said Maus, who was also the Mexican consul general in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1990 to 1994 and from 1995 to 2001.

“The big difference from previous years is that there were discriminatory acts before, but not the belief that discrimination is allowed,” he said.

Bolstered by what Maus called “an ultraconservative element,” some people “realized they could have open aggression against a group of people who could not defend themselves.”

Bernardo Mendez Lugo, Mexico’s deputy consul in Tucson, Arizona, said he sees three main forms of discrimination: racial profiling by law enforcement officers, problems in the workplace and difficulties in the rental housing market.

In the workplace, he said, employees often find they are passed over for promotions despite their qualifications or length of employment. The abuse, Mendez Lugo said, is generally aimed at undocumented workers.

“They are told, ‘I’m going to call immigration [authorities] if you keep asking,’ ” Mendez Lugo said.

Federal officials say there are more than 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Most of them come from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

The center urged the federal government to strengthen labor laws and crack down on racial profiling.

“We’re talking about a matter of basic human rights here,” said Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen. “By allowing this cycle of abuse and discrimination to continue, we’re creating an underclass of people who are invisible to justice and undermining our country’s fundamental ideals.”

Source: CNN

“Driving while Mexican or Latino”

TAVARES - During the past two years, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office detained more than 200 people solely because they were suspected of being an illegal or undocumented immigrant.

The arrest count is by far the highest of any other Central Florida county that could provide statistics from the same period, and the practice of detaining individuals without criminal charges is being called into question by civil-liberties and immigration advocates who suggest the Sheriff’s Office is conducting racial or ethnic profiling.

According to arrest records in the 215 cases reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel, Lake County deputies customarily stopped vehicles, questioned occupants and then became suspicious about immigration status.

They then typically contacted the U.S. Border Patrol, which issued “detainers,” and the individuals usually were then held at the Lake County Jail until they were picked up by federal authorities for deportation proceedings.

No criminal charges are listed on any of the booking sheets, records show.

Instead, deputies cited “Courtesy Hold for Border Patrol” or “Hold for Border Patrol” and a Florida civil statute regarding contempt of court.

Virtually all the cases involve individuals with Hispanic surnames.

“It used to be [called] ‘driving while black,’” Sister Ann Kendrick with the Hope Community Center told Borders. “Now it’s ‘driving while Mexican or Latino.’ People are terrified. They’re afraid to drive. … People are terrified of you.”

Police departments across Central Florida — from Orlando to Kissimmee to Leesburg — generally do not ask about federal detainers unless they’ve arrested someone on a criminal charge and the individual’s citizenship comes into question.

“It doesn’t happen at all with us,” said Stacie Miller, a spokeswoman for Kissimmee police. “We don’t arrest them and hold them until a detainer comes in. … We focus on if there is a crime.”

Among Lake County crime fighters from late 2007 to early this year, the Sheriff’s Office was the arresting agency in 215 cases in which detainers were issued without charges.

The detentions in Lake gained widespread attention earlier this year when Tavares police arrested an illegal-immigrant mother from Honduras without a criminal charge.

Rita Cote — who had an administrative warrant for deportation — was held in jail for more than two weeks, well beyond the 48 hours allowed under federal law.

Cote and her husband are now preparing to sue Tavares police and the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, according to their attorney.

Since 2001, there has been “a great deal of confusion regarding the actual authority of local and state police to enforce federal immigration law,” according to a 2007 immigration report written by Michele Waslin, a senior analyst with the Immigration Policy Center.

Even the federal regulation governing the detainers is open to interpretation about whether local law enforcement should first have custody of an individual before they get issued.

The Miami-Dade Police Department has issued a Legal Bulletin citing court cases and stating “local or state police officers should not arrest or detain an individual solely on the basis of such a detainer or other civil hold order …”

Borders defends his deputies: “If here’s a traffic stop and they [suspects] cannot produce identification and it’s determined they may be here illegally, we contact Border Patrol,” he said. “If a federal law-enforcement agency — whether they ask or demand [to hold someone on a detainer] — we’re going to do that.”

To read the whole article click here. 

Author: Anthony Colarossi

Source: Orlando Sentinel