How immigration enforcement tempts cops into racial profiling

*Undocumented day laborers are arrested, their information forwarded to immigration authorities, and deported for things for which most of us would not be detained – loitering (at day labor gathering spots) is the most prevalent one. VL

By Dara Lynd, Vox

One day in May, construction worker Jose Adan Fugon was standing by the side of the road waiting for a ride to work. That was enough to catch the eye of the New Llano, Louisiana, police. The police asked Fugon (and the four other workers waiting alongside him) for ID, and arrested all five for loitering.

Once Fugon and his co-workers were booked, the police were able to send the men’s information to Border Patrol, which checked its immigration records. It turned out that Fugon and a companion, Gustavo Barahona-Sanchez, had been deported before, and had reentered the country. The other three men were released, but Fugon and Barahona-Sanchez were held in detention and prepped for deportation.

Fugon was deported on Tuesday; Barahona-Sanchez is scheduled for deportation on Thursday. But at least one person within the Department of Homeland Security didn’t think they should have been arrested at all. A civil rights lawyer at DHS looked over the arrest records and concluded that it certainly seemed the New Llano police had only stopped to question the construction workers because they were Latino. The lawyer worried the questioning, and the loitering arrests, were just an excuse for the police to send info to Border Patrol and check whether any of the construction workers were unauthorized immigrants.

In other words, by deporting Fugon, the federal government rewarded the New Llano police for engaging in racial profiling.

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