Los Angeles Times
By Joseph Tanfani and Brian Bennet
October 15, 2015
Staff
attorney for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said two Honduran
men arrested in Louisiana should not be deported because they were
detained by local police
on the basis of their ethnicity, according to an internal email
obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The
case highlights the ongoing concern among some senior leaders in the
Homeland Security Department that local police are making arrests based
on appearance and then
calling immigration agents to check immigration status.
An
attorney with the DHS’ Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
recommended Sept. 21 that the two men, who are in the country illegally,
be released because they
pose no threat and should not have been arrested in the first place.
“Detention
based on ethnic appearance … is not an appropriate form of police
custody for Border Patrol or ICE to use as a foundation for an
enforcement action,” wrote
Megan H. Mack, a lawyer with the civil rights and civil liberties
office.
Tracking down deportation targets
Originally
formed to locate immigrants who had failed to comply with a judge’s
deportation order, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement program is
increasingly being
used to find immigrants with criminal convictions who have recently
been let out of jail.
Her
internal report, intended for ICE Director Sarah Saldana and other
officials in the department, was inadvertently sent to lawyers for the
two men.
Immigration
and Customs Enforcement officials chose not to follow her
recommendation and say they are following department guidelines in
deporting the men. They say the
two men, Jose Adan Fugon-Cano and Gustavo Barahona Sanchez, both had
been removed from the U.S. before, and thus are still priorities for
deportation under the department’s new guidelines. The men are now being
held in the Alexandria Transportation Center
in Louisiana, the last stop for many unauthorized immigrants who are
flown from the U.S.
According
to the lawyers, it also shows that the agency is still using arrests
by local police to round up low-level offenders in the country
illegally, in spite of a
new plan to target only priority cases.
“I
think at the end of the day they do have targets to meet and they’re
willing to do whatever it takes to meet those quotas,” said Julie Mao, a
lawyer with the New Orleans
Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, who represents the two men. “This
is a precise example of an agency with no transparency.”
Adan,
36, and Barahona, 29, say they were standing outside a Motel 6 in May
waiting for a ride to a construction job when a local policeman in New
Llano, La., stopped
and asked them for identification. Five men were picked up, but the
other three have been released; Adan and Barahona, who is the father of
two U.S. citizens, ended up in an immigration cell.
“One
moment is burned in my memory,” Adan said in an affidavit. “When one of
[the] police was putting us in the car, he laughed at us, laughed at
our identification, and
threw the documents on the top of his car. I would use the word racism
to describe how they treated us."
Mack,
who reviewed the case after a complaint was filed by the pair's
lawyers, wrote that the two men, who have never been charged with a
crime besides entering the country
illegally, appeared to pose no security threat. She recommended that
the department “strongly consider” releasing the two men.
“The
only basis for the arrest seems to have been to give Border Patrol an
opportunity to run an immigration investigation,” she wrote. “This is
not a practice the department
wishes to endorse or facilitate.”
The
total number of people deported from the U.S. has declined steadily
over the past three years, since the Obama administration told
immigration agents to focus more
on deporting convicted criminals, repeat immigration violators and
recent border crossers. Critics have said the limits have put more
pressure on immigration agents to find creative ways to locate
immigrants in the country illegally.
Because
the two men have been removed before, an ICE spokesman said, they still
meet the second priority under the department’s Priority Enforcement
Program, which went
into effect earlier this year. That program replaced an earlier program
called Secure Communities, which drew growing protests because of cases
in which people were deported after traffic stops or minor arrests.
“As
aliens previously removed from the United States who subsequently
illegally reentered the country, Mr. Barahona and Mr. Fugon both fall
within an ICE enforcement priority
category,” said ICE spokesman Bryan D. Cox, who added that the agency
has decided to deport the men.
Cox added that Mack’s conclusions were speculative and "not a formal finding" of the department.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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