It’s been more than a year since I was pulled off that Frontier flight at the Detroit airport for reasons I can only ascribe to discrimination and racial profiling. It was the end of a long trip home for me, but the beginning of a life-altering experience that has ultimately led me to shine a light on this great injustice. We often think of racial profiling as a problem that impacts other people. I am proof that racial profiling hurts us all.
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.
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.
