Immigration advocates say recent Florida sweeps use profiling
Tron Nick
Still No Fed Sweeps to Round Up Canadians or Europeans
Immigration advocates accused some local and federal officials of using racial profiling as part of the stepped-up immigration enforcement that has sent widespread fear through South Florida's Hispanic and Haitian communities, an accusation immigration agents steadfastly deny. "Many victims of the immigration sweeps have told us they were racially profiled," said Cheryl Little, director of the Miami-based Florida Immigration Advocacy Center. "They were stopped simply because of the way they looked or the language they spoke or because they had an accent." Similar accusations of immigrants being questioned based on their appearances, races or languages surfaced after Sept. 11, when FBI agents interviewed thousands of Arabs, Muslims and Hispanics. This latest round of sweeps has resurrected old fears of racial profiling among immigrant advocates such as Jose Lagos, head of the Miami-based Honduran Unity, an immigrant advocacy group that says Central-Americans are especially vulnerable because many are in the country legally but lack the proper documentation because of immigration backlogs. "I'm concerned when I hear a woman tell me she was stopped at the Tri-rail station in Broward and asked for immigration papers, but the other woman who was nearby who was blond and blue-eyed was not asked for identification, and it turns out she is Chilean, didn't speak English and wasn't a citizen. It appears they are racially profiling people," said Lagos. "We have people who are here legally and have work visas but haven't received the renewal papers because immigration hasn't sent it to them yet."[more]