Imagine that someone assumes that you are a criminal based on your race, religion or ethnicity and treats you like one. Take the case of the Latino students at Hoover High School in Los Angeles who were rounded up during lunch, detained for two hours, frisked and interrogated about gang affiliations by Glendale and Los Angeles police officers, despite no evidence of wrong doing.
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.
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.
By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 10:44am
Welcome to March Madness at the ACLU! We know you usually turn to other sources for this kind of coverage, but we've got something important to add. As you're filling out winning brackets, imagine this scenario: the tournament selection committee decides that squads who fly blue as a team color are three times more likely to be invited to the tournament than non-blue teams. Duke, Kansas, and Michigan are likely in, but say goodbye to most of these powerhouses: Louisville (red & black), Indiana (red & white), Miami (green & orange), and Michigan State (green & white).
In the last 15 years, we've witnessed a dramatic expansion in the jailing of immigrants, from about 70,000 people detained annually to about 400,000. In the mid-1990’s, during the height of an anti-immigrant backlash, Congress passed a series of harsh measures that led to a vast increase in unnecessary detention. This trend has been exacerbated by the private prison industry and county jails looking to exploit immigrant detention for profit.
