Blog of Rights
Cecillia
Wang

Cecillia Wang is director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, where she has worked full-time since 2004 after first serving as a fellow at the project from 1997-98. She has litigated civil and criminal cases in state and federal courts throughout the country. Wang previously worked as an attorney at the federal public defender office for the Southern District of New York and at the San Francisco-based firm Keker & Van Nest. A 1995 graduate of Yale Law School, Wang clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.

07/25/2012
Racial Profiling

Sheriff Arpaio on the Stand

By Cecillia Wang, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 3:46pm

U.S. citizens are entitled to “equal protection under the law” – that is, unless you look Latino and live in Arizona under the rule of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The nation’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff” took the stand in federal court Tuesday, answering hundreds of questions from our legal team and facing the human targets of his racial profiling policies. These victims -- the very people Arpaio is sworn to protect -- have spent years waiting for the day when the sheriff would be forced to explain his discriminatory practices in open court.

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06/28/2012
S.B. 1070 at the Supreme Court

What’s Next for Arizona’s SB 1070 and Other Copycat Laws

By Cecillia Wang, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 6:05pm

The Supreme Court handed down a mixed decision Monday for Arizona and the handful of states that have copied its anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. Striking down three of the four provisions at issue in Arizona v. United States, the Justices affirmed the federal government’s exclusive role in enforcing immigration law. On the one hand, the Court delivered a significant rebuke to legislators who tried to make being an undocumented immigrant a crime. But on the other hand, the Court let stand the discriminatory “show me your papers” provision, or Section 2(B). And while it’s true that the Court sent a warning that Section 2(B) could still be ruled unconstitutional based on pending challenges (by the ACLU and other civil rights groups) focused more directly on racial profiling and prolonged detention, it nevertheless has thrown Arizona and other states into chaos by reversing the lower courts’ decision to block the “show me your papers” law. Arizona officials immediately announced that they would begin enforcing Section 2(B), even though the Supreme Court’s ruling does not immediately lift the order blocking. The Court’s decision now sends the case back to the lower district court in Arizona for further proceedings. 

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08/06/2012
Racial Profiling

Waiting for the Court to Rule: What’s Next for Sheriff Arpaio?

By Cecillia Wang, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 4:25pm

After seven days of trial testimony from both the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the Latino residents of the county who have suffered under a pattern and practice of racial profiling, the civil trial against Sheriff Joe Arpaio came to an end last week. The U.S. District Court will now decide whether Arpaio, the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America, has targeted Latinos for discriminatory traffic stops and illegal detentions.

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