A class action lawsuit filed on behalf of eight Latino New Yorkers, including two from Buffalo, accuses the Department of Homeland Security — and its component agencies U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — of illegally detaining New York residents based solely on their perceived ethnicity.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York by the Legal Aid Society, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road New York and Covington & Burling LLP.
The two Buffalonians are identified in the lawsuit as a married couple — a 55-year-old Latina woman with initials RCR and a 63-year-old Latino man with initials FRP. Both residents have pending asylum applications and employment authorizations, the lawsuit said, and were arrested by immigration officers without a warrant in the Walmart parking lot in Cheektowaga on Jan. 24. They were released on bail three weeks later, on Feb. 18.
"[Agents] are stopping people walking to the subway, driving to work, grocery shopping, people who appear Latino, mostly based on their their ethnicity or their the language they're speaking, and then they're arresting them without a warrant on the spot," NYCLU attorney Amy Belsher told BTPM NPR.
Belsher claims amid President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, immigration agents are putting the constitution to the wayside.
"They're impermissibly using somebody's ethnicity or the language that they're speaking, and based on fully that, stalking people," said Belsher. "That violates people's rights. And it doesn't just violate the rights of non citizens who do also have that constitutional protection, but it violates the rights of citizens and lawful permanent residents and other people who have status here."
Belshar said they will ask the court to explicitly end profiling tactics, and return to targeted and warrant-based immigration enforcement. ICE says they do not use race as a foundation for arrest, instead using "reasonable suspicion."
A September Supreme Court ruling allows ICE to continue its roving patrols, which critics say enable racial profiling during street arrests.
The lawsuit lists the defendants as Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, among others.
