By Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:19pm
Today we let federal lawmakers know that Arizona’s racial profiling law, S.B. 1070, is about much more than just the state of Arizona and its immigrants. It’s about how we see ourselves as a nation.
By Cecillia Wang, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 10:36am
The U.S. Department of Justice announced yesterday that after a three-year investigation, it found that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) has engaged in a pattern and practice of racial profiling against Latino residents. The Justice Department also found the office unlawfully retaliated against its critics, discriminated against Latinos held in its jails and failed to provide policing services to the county’s Latino residents.
By Chris Rickerd, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:24pm
At the end of today's Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee hearing on state and local immigration enforcement (ACLU statement here), former Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce tried to explain why Arizona's racial profiling law, S.B. 1070, makes sense. He proposed a logical two-step (watch from 120:45 here): First, he asserted that 90 percent of those who violate our immigration laws "come across that Southern border," and are "Hispanic." (In fact, 77 percent of the undocumented population is Latino.)
The government has filed a suit against Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law, which it said conflicts with federal laws and makes it too easy for police to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally.
Modeled on Arizona’s infamous SB 1070 but taking it to even greater extremes, the Alabama law is considered the most pernicious of a series of state anti-immigrant laws passed this year.
The Justice Department lawsuit filed Monday comes on the heels of a class-action challenge filed last month by the ACLU and a coalition of other civil rights organizations charging the law is unconstitutional on multiple grounds. On July 21, the coalition filed a request that the court block the law from taking effect, pending a final ruling on the law’s constitutionality.
