US to pay $350,000 to settle lawsuit over 2007 immigration sweep in New Haven, Conn.
Eleven men who claimed immigration agents violated their rights in 2007 raids on their New Haven neighborhood have won a $350,000 settlement from the U.S. government, which also agreed to halt deportation proceedings against the plaintiffs, their attorneys said Tuesday.
The raids on the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Fair Haven came a day after the city became the first to offer identification cards to illegal immigrants, and critics including the mayor have contended the federal sweep was retaliation for the ID program — a charge denied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The settlement appears to be the largest ever paid by the United States in a lawsuit over residential immigration raids, and the first to include compensation as well as immigration relief, according to Mark Pedulla, a Yale law student who was involved in representing the plaintiffs.
“They hope to be able to offer an example of what can happen when you stand up for your rights,” Pedulla said.
Ross Feinstein, an ICE spokesman, said the settlement is not intended as an admission of liability on the part of the U.S. government. “The government is settling in order to avoid the additional time and expense of further litigation,” Feinstein said.
The plaintiffs were among roughly 30 people arrested on the raid in the early morning hours of June 6, 2007.
The men argued the agents drew their weapons, forced them out of bed and frightened young children in some of the homes. They claimed the federal agency was retaliating against New Haven, which has a reputation as a “sanctuary city” for its embrace of illegal immigrants, and that they were targeted solely because of their Latino appearance.
“I remember everything that happened to me that morning as if it were yesterday,” plaintiff Edinson Yangua Calva said. “There are things I haven’t been able to get over, it is something that stays with you forever.”
In June 2009, a federal judge ruled that agents violated the constitutional rights of four immigrants in the raids. Immigration Judge Michael Straus said the ICE agents went into the immigrants’ homes without warrants, probable cause or their consent, and he put a stop to deportation proceedings against the four defendants, whose names were not released.
Five of the plaintiffs were still facing deportation proceedings, but those will be halted as part of the settlement agreement, Pedulla said.
The sweeps in New Haven came after the city approved issuing identification cards to all of its residents, regardless of immigration status. ICE officials have denied that the raids were retaliatory, saying planning began the year before.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. Response to USCIS Request for Comments on Admission of L-1 Workers (Public Comment)
2. Utah: America's Reddest State Has Lost Its Moral Compass on Illegal Immigration (Blog)
3. Immigration in Two Presidential Races (Blog)
4. How the More-Migration People Manipulate Numerical Ceilings (Blog)
5. Why Obama Doesn't Have a Clue (Blog)
6. Federal Judge Rejects Illegal-Alien Lawsuit Against County Sheriff (Blog)
7. Hidden Double Attacks on our Immigration System (Blog)
8. ICE Names 'Public Advocate' – Call Him! (Blog)
9. When Activism Extinguishes Public Conversation (Blog)
10. Wash. Post to the Less-Educated: Drop Dead (Blog)
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
No comments:
Post a Comment