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Labor Panel Says US Immigration Raids Violating Constitutional Rights
of Workers
By Deirdre Jurand
Jurist
Tuesday 26 February 2008
A panel convened by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
(UFCW) [union website] said Tuesday that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) is violating the constitutional rights of US workers by conducting illegal
searches and seizures in workplace raids to find illegal immigrants. The UFCW's
National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of Fourth Amendment Rights
[press release] said that ICE agents are using arrest warrants for specific
workers at a given work site as an excuse to detain and search the whole workforce,
sometimes including US citizens. The panel plans to release a report detailing
its findings and making recommendations designed to protect the Fourth Amendment
rights of UFCW members. The Washington Post has more.
The UFCW hearings are a response to ongoing ICE actions initiated under Operation
Return to Sender, a controversial program to find and deport illegal immigrants,
and are not the first allegations of Fourth Amendment violations by ICE. In
November 2007, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a lawsuit
[complaint, PDF; JURIST report] against ICE on behalf of several families who
said that ICE agents violently raided their homes without first obtaining court
warrants. The suit alleged that the raids were meant to target illegal immigrants
but often focused on homes that do not house them and where ICE agents could
not "reasonably expect" to find them. The suit further accused ICE
of singling out Hispanics and said the raids violate constitutional protections
against unreasonable searches.
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