Residents file lawsuit against ICE agency
By JON SHIREK 11Alive News Atlanta

Six Georgians, all U.S.- born citizens, are suing the federal government on behalf of themselves and others, claiming that armed federal agents raided their homes and businesses without warrants, accusing them of being illegal immigrants. The six plaintiffs are Marie Justeen Mancha and her mother, Maria Christina Martinez, of Reidsville; Ranulfo Perez of Adrian; Maria Margarita Morales and Gladis Alicia Espitia of Oak Park; and David Robinson or Metter.

They filed the lawsuit in Atlanta Federal Court recently. They say that in September, federal immigration agents conducted unconstitutional dragnets in at least three South Georgia counties, detaining and questioning U.S. citizens as if they were suspected illegal immigrants, simply because the citizens look like illegal immigrants from Mexico, or have Hispanic names.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is representing them. "These plaintiffs are all United States citizens who were detained, harassed and terrified solely because of their appearance," said Mary Bauer, lead attorney on the case, who is with the Immigrant Justice Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"The defendants engaged in a Gestapo-like campaign designed to terrorize and intimidate the Latino community in South Georgia," Bauer said at a news conference outside the Russell Federal Building in downtown Atlanta. "This campaign was based largely on racial and ethnic profiling, in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution."

A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Dean Boyd, told 11Alive News, "The suggestion that this was a random sweep intended to drive poor Latinos out of Georgia is absolutely false."

Boyd said the operation in South Georgia in September was "carefully planned," during months of investigation and "extensive research" prior to the arrests. "We had names and addresses of people violating U.S. immigration laws," Boyd said, and the operation resulted in the arrests of 125 people charged with immigration violations.

"Not a single U.S. citizen was arrested, and that's an important point," Boyd said. "It was not a 'campaign of terror,' that's ridiculous."

All six plaintiffs named in the lawsuit were born in the U.S. Five of them are of Hispanic descent. The sixth is of Anglo descent.

Plaintiff Marie Justeen Mancha of Reidsville, GA, is 15-years-old, and she told reporters at the news conference that she was at home one morning in September, getting ready for school, when about two dozen federal agents entered the house, shouting. She said they detained her, interrogated her, and never showed her a search warrant.

"And one was holding a gun," Justeen said, "and that really scared me. And they were screaming, 'Illegals,' and 'Mexicans," and stuff like that. And they asked me if I was illegal, and I said, 'No.'"

She said the agents asked her if her mother, who had stepped out of the house for a moment and was about to return, was in the U.S. illegally. "I was scared that they were going to take her," Justeen said, "even though she's from here, you know, I didn't understand.... I hope that, you know, this never happens again to anybody."

Justeen's mother, Maria Christina Martinez, who is also one of the six, named plaintiffs, said she still wonders, "Why our house, you know?"

She said no one with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch has answered her question.

"To me, it was very unfair what happened to us," she said. "And, yes, you know, I felt like they violated our rights. We are U.S. citizens, you know, and we are like everybody else, pay taxes, and stuff. And, to me, just because they see Mexicans, Hispanics, skin color, they think, you know, everybody's [illegally] from Mexico."

Another one of the plaintiffs, David Robinson of Metter is a landlord who rents homes to workers of Hispanic descent and said he has "no way to check" whether they are U.S. citizens.

Robinson said immigration agents damaged his rental properties during the raids, looking for illegal immigrants.

"They're just going to have to quit doing this, having all these people's lives on a yo-yo string," Robinson told reporters, accusing the federal government of timing the raids for political gain prior to the November elections.

"I mean that's what I feel like it is," Robinson said, "it's just a yo-yo that, every two years, they make these raids and stuff, and they

don't realize that it's human beings involved. And if they're going to enforce the immigration laws, they need to go ahead and do it, and do something, but just quit with this playing around with people's lives."

Dean Boyd of ICE said the agency is going to take a close look at specific allegations against ICE agents. "We take all such allegations seriously," he said, "and the Office of Professional Responsibility will look at each and every allegation."

The defendants are the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; six administrators of ICE, Julie L. Myers, Marcy Forman, Kenneth A. Smith, Gregory Wiest, John P. Torres and John Mata; and up to 30, unnamed ICE agents who participated in the operation.

The lawsuit asks for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, and for a court order stopping the government from conducting similar raids from now on.

After the plaintiffs' news conference in Atlanta, ICE in Washington released this statement:

In September 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents lawfully arrested more than 125 illegal aliens in southeast Georgia as part of a months-long investigation of individuals who used fraudulent documents to illegally gain employment at a local poultry plant.

These enforcement actions were conducted in accordance with constitutional principals that govern all law enforcement activities in the United States. Factors such as race or ethnicity played no role in the enforcement actions. ICE agents made these arrests based on specific information they had developed on the names and addresses of individual immigration violators in these locations. As they carried out these targeted arrests, ICE agents encountered other illegal aliens who they arrested.

All those arrested were in violation of federal immigration laws and were afforded the opportunity to appear before an impartial Immigration Judge. In cases where pressing humanitarian concerns were identified, ICE used its discretion to allow the alien to appear in court at a later date.

ICE takes seriously any allegations of wrongdoing by its employees and its Office of Professional Responsibility thoroughly investigates such allegations. ICE plans to review the lawsuit carefully.

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