Immigration profiling issues
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Over a two-hour stretch one night in April, state troopers stopped two cars on a highway in Inwood, W.Va., a little-known hamlet surrounded by apple orchards in the northeast corner of the state.
In both stops, troopers asked the vehicles' occupants, all Hispanic patrons of a nearby Latin nightclub, for identification. When some handed over Mexican driver's licenses, the troopers contacted the Pittsburgh branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained the drivers and passengers on charges of illegal entry.
Six occupants of the stopped vehicles face deportation proceedings and are challenging the police stops as unwarranted. Immigration lawyers say their clients fell victim to a pattern of racial profiling by state troopers, who they say purposely staked out motorists a mile from Lobo's, a dance club that plays "norteno" music on Saturday nights and draws largely Hispanic patrons from Winchester, Va.
The attorneys plan to ask immigration court judges to throw out these cases on the grounds that the state troopers stopped the cars because of their occupants' race.
"ICE will not tolerate racial profiling at all," said public affairs agent Mark M. Medvesky. He would not comment specifically on the Inwood stops since proceedings are pending.
Sergeant Michael Baylous, spokesman for the West Virginia State Police, was also unable to comment on the Inwood stops for the same reason, but said, "We don't do racial profiling here in West Virginia. Law enforcement is in the business of criminal profiling. We do actively profile criminals, people who violate the law. But we have not, nor will we ever engage in racial profiling."
David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer and law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said this sounded like "a classic case" of racial profiling, adding, "The cops will tell you [racial profiling] is illegal and they'll tell you they don't do it. Cops will say, 'I stopped them for a legitimate reason, I ran their names and found reason to report them.' "
First Published November 22, 2010 12:00 am
