SACRAMENTO – Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez (D-Los Angeles) and more than 28 Assembly Members today called on Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff to halt raids in California by his agency's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division after a series of incidents in southern California that have raised civil liberties concerns and imperiled families and businesses.

The ACLU of Southern California will also soon feature materials pertinent to the raids on their website at http://www.aclu-sc.org/.

Text of the letter:

April 17, 2008

The Honorable Michael Chertoff
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
245 Murray Lane, SW
Washington, D.C., 20528

Dear Secretary Chertoff:

It is with a feeling of great dismay and mounting frustration that we respond to your comments in the Associated Press article dated April 12, 2008, regarding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) recent raids.

As ICE continues with its record number of worksite raids throughout Southern California, a pattern of serious problems has emerged with regard to its interrogation, detention and deportation practices. Given your somewhat blithe defense of the department’s actions, we felt it imperative to illustrate several examples of what actions you are defending.

On February 7, 2008, ICE carried out a worksite raid at MicroSolutions Enterprise, a toner and ink manufacturing company in Van Nuys. This raid resulted in numerous very clear violation of constitutional rights as well as the egregious and offensive mistreatment of workers.

Reports surfaced that during the raid workers were forced to self-segregate by documentation status. During the raid itself, ICE officials did not release legal residents and U.S. citizens until they were interrogated – ICE seemed to assume that the workers were guilty until proven innocent.

Additionally, ICE officials denied workers access to legal counsel as they were questioned and continued interrogations even when workers requested the right to legal counsel. It was not until the ACLU, the National Immigration Law Center, and the National Lawyers Guild sued ICE that workers were allowed legal counsel during their interviews. Legal representation is especially a concern when a person may be a legal resident but simply does not have possession of his or her documents.

Over 130 workers were detained and even those released on “humanitarian grounds” -- such as pregnant women, nursing mothers, and those with medical conditions -- were forced to wear electronic monitoring devices when they were sent back to their families and children. ICE then added another harsh and punitive restriction on these workers – a home curfew of 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Of course, the American citizens most profoundly harmed by the raids are the children left at home alone when their parents are arrested. Often these individuals were also transported to detention facilities far away from their families. In this case, nearly half of the workers had children, and roughly two thirds of these children were American citizens. These Americans will be forced to either grow up apart from their parents or be denied some of their country’s greatest promises as a result of this irrational enforcement action. 

The manner in which ICE has conducted its workplace raids and overly aggressive investigation practices is unacceptable on societal grounds and questionable, at best, on legal grounds. When enforcement actions are conducted beyond the scope of warrants and based on individualized suspicion, they result in harm to family members, housemates, neighbors, and other innocent bystanders (many of whom are lawful residents, or even U.S. citizens). As a result, families have been torn apart and communities left traumatized. Moreover, this method of indiscriminate immigration enforcement does little, if anything, to improve the safety and security of the United States.

While ICE’s workplace raids generate attention and fear, they do not, as a rule, seem to be targeted at California’s overriding immigration concerns: employers who knowingly and willingly abuse workers by disregarding the immigration laws. ICE’s mission is critical and, granted, difficult without a comprehensive legal and policy framework. However, it must be held accountable for the manner in which it is carrying out the law in California. You can’t simply brush aside constitutional rights just because the President and Congress have yet to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

In the coming weeks, we plan to schedule a meeting with you in which we can have a frank exchange. We hope that during this meeting you can provide us with some assurances as to how you will address the aforementioned issues. We also call on you to conduct an investigation into the practices described in this letter. Until such time as that investigation is completed, we call on you to halt worksite raids that are not conducted based on probable cause, given the serious abuses outlined above. 

Sincerely,

FABIAN NUÑEZ                                                       KAREN BASS

Speaker of the Assembly                                         Speaker-elect of the Assembly

JOE COTO                                                              HECTOR DE LA TORRE

Assemblymember, 23rd District                               Assemblymember, 50th District

KEVIN DE LEÓN                                                     MIKE FEUER

Assemblymember, 45th District                               Assemblymember, 42nd District 

FELIPE FUENTES                                                   WARREN T. FURUTANI

Assemblymember, 39th District                                Assemblymember, 55th District

PAUL KREKORIAN                                                JOHN LAIRD

Assemblymember, 43rd District                               Assemblymember, 27th District

MARK LENO                                                           SALLY LIEBER

Assemblymember, 13th District                                Assemblymember, 22nd District 

TONY MENDOZA                                                   GENE MULLIN

Assemblymember, 56th District                               Assemblymember, 19th District

CURREN D. PRICE , Jr.                                          MARY SALAS

Assemblymember, 51st District                                Assemblymember, 79th District

NELL SOTO                                                              WILMER AMINA CARTER

Assemblymember, 61st District                                  Assemblymember, 62nd District 

JIM BEALL, JR.,                                                      SANDRÉ SWANSON

Assemblymember, 24th District                                 Assemblymember, 16th District

MERVYN DYMALLY                                              JOSE SOLORIO

Assemblymember, 52nd District                              Assemblymember, 69th District 

MIKE ENG                                                               LONI HANCOCK

Assemblymember, 49th District                                Assemblymember, 14th District

DAVE JONES                                                           NOREEN EVANS

Assemblymember, 9th District                                  Assemblymember, 7th District

FIONA MA                                                                MIKE DAVIS

Assemblymember, 12th District                                 Assemblymember, 48th District

ANNA CABALLERO                                                                      

Assemblymember, 28th District