Blog of Rights
Alessandra
Soler
09/06/2012
S.B. 1070

SB 1070: The Fight Continues

By Alessandra Soler, ACLU of Arizona at 2:41pm

For 19-year-old Hugo Carrillo Escobedo, SB1070 is about more than just “showing your papers.”  After “squealing” his tires, Hugo wound up in immigration detention for eight hours. Hugo’s story is particularly compelling because he was initially just given a citation for the traffic violation and immediately released.  But the police officer later showed up at his house, saying: “Do you know about SB1070? If I don’t report you, I could lose my job.” 

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07/19/2012
Racial Profiling

Sheriff Arpaio, Racial Profiling is Illegal

By Alessandra Soler, ACLU of Arizona at 10:09am

As the immigration debate continues across Arizona, most pragmatic people seem to agree on a few undeniable facts: racial profiling is illegal. Stopping a motorist for no reason other than their skin color is wrong. Terrorizing American citizens under the guise of immigration enforcement is intolerable.

This week, a class action lawsuit brought by the victims of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s racial profiling practices will get underway. These proceedings will hopefully change the way Arpaio runs the Sheriff’s Office and prevent future instances of discrimination. Among our goals: helping deputies return to pursuing outstanding felony warrants and child rape cases that have been ignored for years, rather than being forced to detain law-abiding citizens for “traffic violations.”

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08/18/2011
Arizona

Arizona Law Says Choose Between Donations and Providing Care to Women

By Alessandra Soler, ACLU of Arizona at 12:40pm

Just months after Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl made false and misleading statements about Planned Parenthood's prenatal services, Arizona is once again attacking groups that provide abortion information or services. The latest scheme: A law to rewrite the tax code to exclude any nonprofit organization that provides abortion referrals or counseling from receiving donations through the state's Working Poor Tax Credit Program. This law is so broad that it could prevent groups from even discussing abortion or other reproductive health services with women in crisis. Today, we filed a lawsuit challenging that law.

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11/03/2010

Holding America Accountable at International Human Rights Review

By Alessandra Soler, ACLU of Arizona at 12:54pm

This Friday, and for the first time ever, the United States will submit to a peer review of its human rights record as part of the U.N. Human Rights Council's (HRC) Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which is taking place this week in Geneva.

I'm in Geneva as a member of the ACLU delegation to observe these proceedings. Panama and Mongolia were reviewed on Tuesday; dozens of countries submitted questions and recommendations on how well these two democratic nations were promoting and protecting human rights within their borders.

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07/22/2010

Why Arizona's "Show Me Your Papers" Law Must Be Stopped

By Alessandra Soler, ACLU of Arizona at 11:54am

(Originally posted on the Huffington Post.)

Today, the ACLU will be appearing in federal court in its in legal challenge to the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement to demand "papers" from anyone they stop who they suspect isn't authorized to be in the country. The main issue for the court on Thursday will be whether or not to issue a preliminary injunction, stopping the law from going into effect on July 29. For the sake of all Americans who value fairness and equality, let's hope the judge does the right thing and grants the injunction. Arizona should not become a police state where people are subject to racial profiling and live under constant threat of police harassment.

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02/05/2009

Sheriff Joe's Inhumane Circus

By Alessandra Soler, ACLU of Arizona at 1:25pm

Sheriff Joe's one-man circus has made headlines again in Arizona's Maricopa County.

His latest taxpayer-financed media stunt involved the "forced march" of undocumented inmates who are serving out their criminal sentences. Sheriff Arpaio closed down the city streets so that everyone could witness their public humiliation as they walked in chain gangs from a "hard" jail to the infamous Tent City, where they will be forced to endure unsafe conditions including summer months with temperatures of upwards of 120 degrees.

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08/07/2008

ACLU Reminds "America's Toughest Sheriff" That He's Not Above the Law

By Alessandra Soler, ACLU of Arizona at 11:06am

No one is above the law, not even Joe Arpaio, the media-hungry sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. His stunts include reinstituting chain gangs (they include women and juveniles), erecting a tent city where over 2,000 convicted men and women serve out their sentences in 120 degree desert heat, feeding prisoners only twice a day (he's bragged of serving green bologna), and forcing them to wear pink underwear.

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05/11/2007

Arizona Brings Stories of Migrant Deaths and Racial Profiling

By Alessandra Soler, ACLU of Arizona at 3:46pm
Dr. Bustamante arrived in Tucson late Thursday evening. He visited the Florence Detention Center early in the morning on May 4, then traveled to the border where he met with federal officials at the Nogales Border Patrol Station, which covers 32 miles of border from the Patagonia Mountains east of Nogales to Ruby, west of Nogales. It's one of the country's busies
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