Racial Profiling: Face the Truth

Recent revelations, following a racial discrimination lawsuit, reveal that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency operated a program in which they categorized those they arrested as: “Mexican”, “Other than Mexicans” or “Alien from a Special Interest Country.”
 

A coalition of professional organizations of police officers of color and a women’s police organization has thrown their support behind the End Racial Profiling Act of 2011. In a letter to Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking member of the Committee, which held hearings in the fall on racial profiling, the National Council of Law Enforcement Officers Association (NCLEO) indicated strong support for passage of H.R. 3618, the End Racial Profiling Act.

New York college student Nicholas Peart discussed the impact of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies on his life in an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times. At 14, Peart’s mother told him: always carry ID, never panic if stopped by an officer and never run from the police because you might get shot.

Peart, now 23, has had to take that advice to heart.

The federal government jails U.S. citizens without probable cause.  How does this happen? Watch a video about the case of Antonio Montejano, an American citizen, who was jailed for days and forced to sleep in a jail on an “immigration detainer” because of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Secure Communities (SCOMM) Program.