Los Angeles Times (California)
By Joseph Tanfani
October 26, 2015
A Honduras man arrested by Louisiana police in what one government lawyer said was a case of racial profiling has been released by immigration officers.
Gustavo
Barahona-Sanchez, who is in the U.S. illegally, was released from
LaSalle Detention Facility by Immigration and Customs Enforcement late
Friday, according to agency
spokesman Bryan D. Cox. He must report to immigration authorities and
still may face removal, Cox said.
Barahona-Sanchez,
29, who has two children who are U.S. citizens, was arrested along with
another man in May in New Llano, La., as he was standing in a motel
parking lot
waiting with other Latinos for a ride to his construction job. Neither
man was charged, but police contacted Border Patrol, and they were
detained on immigration violations. The other man arrested that day,
Jose Adan Fugon-Cano, was flown back to Honduras
on Tuesday.
Their
cases became a focal point for immigration advocates after the Los
Angeles Times reported that an attorney in the Department of Homeland
Security had found that
the two men were subjected to racial profiling. In an email that was
inadvertently sent to lawyers for the men, Megan H. Mack, head of the
civil rights office in Homeland Security, said they should be released
from custody because they never should have been
arrested in the first place. She wrote they apparently were targeted
for an immigration status check solely because they looked Latino.
“It
is imperative that the Department … work to avoid becoming a conduit,
or an incentive, for improper profiling by local law enforcement,” Mack
wrote, in a Sept. 21
email to ICE Director Sarah Saldaña.
She
said neither man presented a security threat, and said an arrest based
on ethnic appearance is not a proper basis for a deportation.
Mack’s
email did not sway Saldaña; the men were cleared for removal. Cox said
that both men met the agency’s new priorities for deportation because
both had been removed
from the country before. Neither had any criminal convictions.
Jolene
Elberth, an organizer with the Congress of Day Laborers in New Orleans,
an advocacy group involved in the case, said she was told that
Barahona-Sanchez has been
given a six-month stay of removal. But that stay could be revoked at
any time, she said, calling on the agency to end its enforcement action
against Barahona-Sanchez and to allow Fugon-Cano back into the country.
“Changes
need to be made within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure
that ICE cuts ties with local law enforcement agencies found to practice
biased policing,”
Elberth wrote in an email.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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