The American Civil Liberties Union joins with the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and other concerned individuals and organizations during this the "National Week of Action Against Immigration Raids" in calling for an end to abusive immigration raids. The abuses documented in various media accounts and in numerous court cases cannot be ignored. There is no excuse for physical and verbal abuses by INS officials, and there is no room for ethnic stereotyping in immigration enforcement or, for that matter, in other law enforcement activities.

Abusive raids must be stopped because they:

--Are conducted in a dragnet manner and sweep in citizens and lawfully-present aliens

--Depart from Fourth Amendment principles of probable cause and reasonable suspicion of a violation as a basis for enforcement activities against particular people

--Target individuals -- primarily Latinos and Asians -- based on their national origin or on proxies for national origin, such as appearance or accent

--Are used by employers to thwart union organizing

--Hamper efforts to protect immigrant communities from crime

These raids do not target particular individuals about whom facts exist indicating that the person is in the country illegally. Instead these abusive raids sweep up every person nearby, citizens and authorized aliens alike, forcing all who are confined to prove their lawful presence to avoid continued detention.

These abusive immigration raids deprive workers of basic Fourth Amendment protections. In many abusive raids, there is typically no probable cause of crime, or even of a violation of the immigration laws, that supports an entry onto property or detention of an individual. In fact, raids directed at employees are often conducted with the consent of the employer. However, the consent of the employer does nothing to further the interests of the true targets of the raid, the employees. Though workers have a right to refrain from answering questions, that right is illusory when questions are posed by armed officers in a coercive environment.

Even raids conducted with a legitimate warrant, often referred to as a "Blackie's" warrant, [Blackie's House of Beef v. Castillo, (D.C. Cir. 1981)], are conducted in a dragnet fashion. The Blackie's warrant does not require that the INS name or even describe the allegedly undocumented aliens it seeks. Consequently, the raid is conducted by barring the exits, and questioning everybody, or discriminatorily questioning those who "look foreign" or speak with a foreign accent.

These abusive raids target people based on their appearance, accent, or surname. While the INS has instructed its employees to refrain from using foreign appearance as the sole criterion in a work-site investigation, this discriminatory enforcement has not stopped. In fact, INS headquarters gave INS district offices a green light to use "foreign appearance" and "ethnic characteristics and language" in combination with other factors during work site raids to determine whom to question and/or detain.

Dragnet tactics that characterize an abusive immigration raid inevitably entangle citizens who are not -- and who should not be -- required to carry with them identity papers, or to retrieve them from home to satisfy an agent of the government. These practices are inconsistent with the principles that underlie the Fourth Amendment, the equal protection component of the Due Process clause, and the most basic notion of privacy: the right to be left alone.

Employers often abuse immigration raids to head off union organizing drives. Employers sometimes report their own work premises to the INS in order to prompt a raid and disrupt the organizing effort. We reiterate our call on the INS to refrain from conducting raids of work sites during union organizing drives.

INS enforcement operations that involve local police are also counter-productive and should be abandoned. The vesting of local law enforcement officials with immigration enforcement powers and joint law enforcement operations between local police and the INS both undermine enforcement of the criminal law. Community policing depends upon the trust and cooperation of the community to be protected. Witnesses to, and victims of crimes will simply not report them to police officers who have immigration enforcement duties, if such reporting could trigger immigration proceedings against themselves, their friends or members of their family. This mixing of law enforcement missions translates into more crimes going unsolved, or unstopped, in immigrant communities.

The answer to abusive immigration raids is not -- as is proposed by the INS -- the placement of a Public Relations officer at each site when INS conducts an abusive raid. An INS PR officer's "spin" does nothing to restore dignity to a person who is intimidated, detained and questioned without any particularized suspicion at a work site, or a park, or on a street corner, just because of ethnic appearance. Rather, this practice must end, and be replaced by law enforcement operations focused on particular suspects, not on entire work forces, entire communities, or everybody on a given street corner. This may be news to the officials in Chandler, Arizona, who went door-to-door last year looking for undocumented aliens: there is no such thing as an "illegal neighborhood."

The answer, rather, is to abandon the practice of indiscriminately rounding up people and putting the burden on them to prove their lawful presence. Immigration enforcement operations should be held to the same standards of particularity and suspicion as are other law enforcement operations.

In addition, we call on Congress to repeal the laws that foster the abuses. In 1986, legislation was adopted to impose sanctions on employers who hire undocumented workers. The ACLU has long opposed employer sanctions because they result in discrimination against Asian and Latino workers based on appearance and accent. It's time for Congress to admit that this experiment has failed, and that employer sanctions must end.

Though they have turned employers into immigration cops, work places into immigration check points, and workers into numbers tracked in a computerized data base maintained by the federal government, employer sanctions have failed to discourage the undocumented from coming to the United States. The fact that some abusive raids are justified as efforts to enforce employer sanctions is one more reason the employer sanctions law should be repealed.

Instead, the root causes of undocumented immigration must be addressed, and workers' rights to a fair wage and safe working conditions must be better enforced to diminish the incentive for employers to hire and exploit the undocumented.

The ACLU of Southern California today sent a letter to the San Bernardino County Coroner's Office protesting the release of more than 50 fetuses to church groups in Chino, Chino Hills and Montclair for the purpose of holding religious memorial and burial services this evening and tomorrow. The ACLU has threatened to sue the County for violating the First Amendment's requirement of the separation of church and state if the fetuses are released to the church groups for the express purpose of holding religious services.

The fetuses were discovered in containers in the Chino Hills area in March 1997. After an 18-month investigation by law enforcement, the San Bernardino County Coroner agreed to turn over the remains to church groups who plan the vigils. The following letter was sent to San Bernardino County Coroner Brian McCormick:

"It has come to the attention of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California ("ACLU") that your office has agreed to turn over more than fifty fetuses to religious groups for the purpose of holding memorial services in the communities of Chino, Chino Hills, Riverside and Montclair October 9 through 11, 1998. We are writing to express our grave concerns about your facilitation, as a public officer, of religious burial services. As described more fully below, such action is in clear violation of the United States and California constitutions, as well as California health law. As such, we urge you to refrain from donating the fetuses in your custody to religious groups to avoid such violations.

"In Feminist Women's Health Center v. Philibosian (1984) 117 Cal. App. 3d 1076, the California Court of Appeal held that the Los Angeles County District Attorney's proposed burial of 16,500 fetuses in a private cemetery, after he was aware that the cemetery had contracted with a religious organization to hold a burial service, violated the separation of church and state guaranteed by the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States constitution and article XVI, Section 5 of the California constitution.

"In so doing, the court emphasized that, because burying fetuses in adherence to the beliefs of a Catholic group "represents a particular religious view . . . the district attorney's purported action would, in effect, sponsor and approve that view." Id. at 1086. Moreover, any state action showing a preference of a particular religious belief will be strictly scrutinized and must be invalidated unless it is justified by a compelling governmental interest. Id. at 1088. Because the district attorney's only interest with regard to the fetuses was to "dispose of them lawfully" pursuant to California health law (see, e.g, Calif. Health & Safety Code ﾌ_ 7054.3), the court determined that there was no compelling state interest to dispose of the fetuses in a private ceremony that would "justify the appearance of state sanction of a particular religious belief." Id.

"Moreover, the court stated that because "the abortion issue is one of the most emotionally explosive issues in today's political firmament," the proposed burial clearly presented "political entanglement" with religion. Id. at 1090.

"The appearance of support by the state, of one side of this controversy over the other, is improper political entanglement. The act of indirectly turning the fetuses over . . . for religious burial as murdered humans would vitiate the studied neutrality which is the state's constitutional course. The proposed action would aggravate an already volatile religious issue.

"Like the district attorney's proposed religious burial held unconstitutional in Feminist Women's Health Center, the San Bernardino County Coroner's proposed release of fetuses for religious memorial services clearly violates the constitutional separation of church and state. Moreover, discarding of fetuses in this manner raises concerns about the County Coroner's failure to adhere to California health laws. Given the urgency of the situation, the ACLU expects that the County Coroner's office will take immediate steps to prevent any unlawful delivery of fetuses to religious groups for sectarian purposes. If such delivery is not prevented, we will have no choice but to take legal action. Given the clear status of the law, the Coroner's office would likely be subject to the embarrassment of having an injunction issued against it and damages being assessed."

Important legislation to measure discrimination in traffic stops was vetoed by Governor Wilson. The "California Traffic Stops Statistics Act," also known as the "Driving While Black or Brown" (DWB) bill, would have made it possible to keep tabs on racial bias, by requiring law enforcement to collect and report statistical information for a three-year period on the race of motorists pulled over by police.

The bill was sponsored by Assemblymember Kevin Murray, Chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, and supported by Black and Latino law enforcement organizations. All across the state, African-Americans and Latinos have experienced the humiliation of being inexplicably stopped while driving, detained and searched by police. Governor Wilson's veto shows that he doesn't think this is a problem. Your voice can help convince him that it is.

If this has happened to you -- if you have been stopped for the so-called offense of "Driving While Black or Brown" -- you can help get this bill passed in the next session of the legislature. Call the ACLU toll-free and we will help make your voice heard in the state Capitol. We need your help to get this important legislation enacted next year. Have you been stopped unfairly? Tell your story. You can call the ACLU toll free in California at 1-877-DWB-STOP. It's a FREE CALL. 1-877-DWB-STOP that's 1/877-392-7867.