Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Immigration Roundup: Targeting Day Laborers Can Get You in Hot Water

by Laura D. Francis

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The Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff’s Office—headed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio—learned the hard way May 24 that targeting immigration raids at areas where Latino day laborers congregate does not comport with the U.S. Constitution. A federal judge in Arizona ruled that deputies’ decisions of whether to stop a car for a traffic violation and investigate passengers’ immigration status was based in part on the Hispanic race of the car’s occupants, a no-no under the 14^th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The lawsuit, filed by a group of Latinos represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Arizona, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the law firm Covington & Burling, focused on the MCSO’s “saturation patrols”—some of which targeted day laborers specifically—in which deputies stopped vehicles for traffic violations with the purpose of detecting undocumented immigrants.

“MCSO specifically equated being a Hispanic or Mexican (as opposed to Caucasian or African-American) day laborer with being an unauthorized alien,” the court said. While enforcing immigration law is a compelling government interest, targeting immigration enforcement operations against Latinos is not a narrowly tailored way to carry out that interest, considering that most Latinos in the county are lawful residents and the Fourth Amendment doesn’t allow using a person’s race to justify probable cause or reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.

Judge G. Murray Snow of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona also found that the deputies violated the Fourth Amendment because they had no authority to arrest or detain individuals for unlawful presence without probable cause or reasonable suspicion that they had committed a state crime—especially considering that the MCSO continued to enforce federal immigration law after the office’s authority under the federal 287(g) program was revoked. He also found that the office couldn’t derive that authority from two Arizona laws dealing with immigration.

The League City, Texas, police also violated the Constitution—this time the First Amendment—when the department used a state law against solicitation in the roadway to crack down on day laborers specifically, according to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Although in that case—brought by Jornaleros de Las Palmas, a group of day laborers in the city represented by MALDEF—the court found the day laborers’ Latino race was not the basis for the law enforcement actions. The state law’s prohibition on only certain types of roadway solicitation combined with its enforcement only against day laborers and not other solicitors was a violation of day laborers’ free speech rights.

Magistrate Judge Steven Smith held that enforcing traffic safety was a compelling government interest, but the law was not narrowly tailored to serve that interest because there were other ways of protecting that interest that did not implicate speech, including directly targeting those who cause accidents and otherwise risk public safety.

In Other News:

• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) filed cloture June 6 on the “gang of eight’s” comprehensive immigration overhaul bill (S. 744), with a vote expected June 11. Debate on the motion to proceed began June 7, with Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) expressing their opposition and Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) coming out in support.

• An amendment to the House version of the Homeland Security Department appropriations bill that some are calling a “poison pill” was adopted by that chamber June 6. The amendment, offered by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), would defund DHS’s prosecutorial discretion and deferred action for childhood arrivals programs. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney slammed the amendment, saying “it will not become law.”

• The Justice Department May 20 filed an amicus brief with the Florida Supreme Court arguing that federal law bans states from granting law licenses to undocumented immigrants regardless of whether they qualify for work authorization under DACA. The case pending before Florida’s highest court is one of three cases where an undocumented law school graduate is seeking bar admission—the other two are in California and New York.

• Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) June 5 announced that he was leaving the House “gang of eight” working on its own comprehensive immigration legislation, citing differences with the other members over undocumented immigrants’ access to health care. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) June 6 said the rest of the bipartisan House groups is pressing ahead with the measure, which he expects will be introduced “in the coming days or weeks.”

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