Latinos In DC Accuse ICE Of Racial Profiling In Lawsuit
Latinos In DC Accuse ICE Of Racial Profiling In Class Action Suit
Four Latino residents of Washington, D.C., filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration Thursday, accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of “blatant and explicit” racial profiling, which the administration has denied numerous times in the past, despite literally taking their fight to racially profile all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and winning.
According to WUSA 9, the lawsuit’s lead plaintiff is 47-year-old Salvadoran immigrant José Escobar Molina, who has been a D.C. resident for more than 20 years and has maintained valid temporary protected status (TPS) since 2001. Molina claimed in the suit that, despite being in the U.S. legally, he was snatched off the street last month and taken to an ICE processing center in Virginia.
“As he was about to get into his truck, plain-clothed and unidentified federal agents exited the cars and — without conducting any inquiry — seized Mr. Escobar Molina, grabbing him by the arms and legs and immediately handcuffing him,” the lawsuit says. “The agents arrested him without a warrant and without asking for his name, his identification, or anything about his immigration status.”
Molina was reportedly held overnight before an ICE agent finally realized he had protected status and released him.
The suit, which was filed in federal court in D.C. by a coalition of attorneys from the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, the ACLU for D.C., CASA Inc., the National Immigration Project, Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and Covington & Burling, includes three more plaintiffs, natives of Venezuela, Honduras and El Salvador, who reported similar warrantless arrests, including one that allegedly too place in a Home Depot parking lot just as the 51-year-old Venezuelan migrant had finished shopping. That plaintiff was held in an ICE detention center for four weeks, according to the suit.
“The lawsuit filed Thursday seeks class certification for individuals who have been or could be subject to warrantless immigration arrests in the city and an order barring the Trump administration from conducting such arrests without making individualized assessments of immigration status and flight risk,” WUSA reported.
According to Bloomberg Law, the suit also demands that the federal government put a stop to what it described as “blatant” racial profiling that has “sown terror in Latino and other communities.”
Here’s how the back-and-forth has gone since President Donald Trump began his second term by proceeding with his mass deportation agenda…
Immigrants and non-immigrant citizens of color alike have repeatedly claimed to be victims of the racial profiling of ICE agents, and the Trump administration has repeatedly denied racial profiling was happening, even as administration officials like ICE Director Tom Homan and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have defended the practice of detaining potential undocumented migrants on sight without probable cause. Then, a federal judge determined that ICE agents were racially profiling, and the administration responded by vehemently denying it again. Then came the Supreme Court decision, in which the conservative justices overturned the federal judge’s decision, clearing the way for ICE to continue racially profiling, which the administration then continued to claim it wasn’t doing — while praising the high court’s ruling that it is allowed to racially profile.
It’s enough to make you dizzy, but then, so is everything the Trump administration has done to sow chaos and further division among Americans since Jan. 20.
And we’re all so tired.
SEE ALSO:
Kristi Noem Tells Reporter Not To Talk About ICE’s Racial Profiling
Department Of Homeland Security Claims ICE Doesn’t Engage In Racial Profiling
