Homeland Security again accused of racial profiling

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By Bill Conroy,
Posted on Thu Jan 20th, 2005 at 12:11:17 AM EST

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is being
called on the mat for racially profiling Hispanics and
Haitians in South Florida, according to a recent report in
the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

ICE officials deny the allegations, but they are hard to
dismiss out of hand, given the fact that Hispanic federal
agents themselves have a class-action discrimination lawsuit
pending against the agency. ICE is part of the Department of
Homeland Security, which is the massive 200,000-employee
bureaucracy created in the wake of 9/11 to safeguard the
security of the nation.

The Sun-Sentinel reports the following:
"Many victims of the immigration sweeps have told us they
were racially profiled," said Cheryl Little, director of the
Miami-based Florida Immigration Advocacy Center. "They were
stopped simply because of the way they looked or the language
they spoke or because they had an accent."

Similar accusations of immigrants questioned based on
appearance, race or language surfaced (after) Sept. 11, 2001,
when FBI agents interviewed thousands of Arabs, Muslims and
Hispanics.

This round of sweeps resurrects old fears of racial profiling
among immigrant advocates such as Jose Lagos, head of the
Miami-based Honduran Unity, an immigrant advocacy group who
says Central Americans are especially vulnerable because many
are in the country legally but lack the proper documentation
because of immigration backlogs.

"I'm concerned when I hear a woman tell me she was stopped at
the Tri-Rail station in Broward and asked for immigration
papers, but the other woman who was nearby who was blond and
blue-eyed was not asked for identification and it turns out
she is Chilean, didn't speak English and wasn't a citizen. It
appears they are racially profiling people," Lagos said. "We
have people who are here legally and have work visas but
haven't received the renewal papers because immigration
hasn't sent it to them yet."

Federal agents dispute the allegations, saying they are
trained to look for a range of indicators, including
suspicious behavior.

"The border patrol does board buses, but in no way is racial
profiling used as part of our action," said Victor Colon,
assistant chief patrol agent for the U.S. Border Patrol (also
part of DHS). "The way a person behaves may cause an agent to
ask further questions so we do use behavioral indicators, but
that is just one factor. We are not targeting anyone,
including Haitians."

Similarly other federal agencies also deny such
accusation. "It is clear that we do not target anyone based
on their race, ethnicity or language," said Barbara Gonzalez,
a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or
ICE.

Those statements, though, seem to fly in the face of the
accusations made by ICE Hispanic federal agents themselves.
And it is not Hispanic agents alone who are concerned that
DHS has a problem with racism.

Narco News reported on the issue this past summer:
The largest federal law enforcement association in the
country has thrown its weight behind a call for a
congressional inquiry into an alleged pattern of racial
discrimination within the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS).

The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA),
which represents some 22,000 federal agents in 50 law
enforcement agencies, has directed a letter to Congress in
support of Ruben Gonzalez, a high-ranking supervisor within
DHS' Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in
Houston. The letter, addressed to U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-
Texas, stresses that FLEOA “supports any and all efforts to
eliminate bias and inequities in hiring and promotion
processes by Federal law enforcement agencies.�

Gonzalez is a catalyst behind the growing chorus of Hispanic
agents calling for congressional action on the issue.

Gonzalez's attorney, Ron Schmidt, claims the racial
discrimination within ICE is so pervasive that it has
fostered a dysfunctional agency culture that poses a real
threat to national security.

Schmidt is representing a group of some 400 current and
former Hispanic federal agents who have filed a class-action
discrimination lawsuit against DHS. The litigation alleges
that the Hispanic agents have endured a pattern of racial
discrimination within ICE -- and its predecessor agency, U.S.
Customs -- that has prevented the best and brightest from
advancing within the agency. In addition to monetary damages,
the Hispanic agents are asking the court to order the
government to cease its “illegal and discriminatory conduct,"
the class-action lawsuit states.

Given those facts, the report in the Sun-Sentinel should come
as no surprise. If DHS is discriminating against its own
Hispanic agents, how big a leap of faith is it to believe
that attitude is spilling over to citizens? The problem is
made even worse if agency officials are failing to deal with
the issue, but rather are content to conduct business as
usual.

Again, from the Sun-Sentinel report:
"... Advocates insist the increased volume of calls from
Haitians and Latinos who repeatedly describe a similar
scenario in which agents or local law enforcement question
their legal status is raising deep concerns.

"Officials may say they are not purposefully targeting
someone based on racial profile, but in reality this is what
appears to be happening," said Robert Vaughan, president of
the Caribbean Bar Association.