By Peninsula Daily News
and Associated Press
SEATTLE — A coalition of 21 civil liberties, immigrant rights and labor groups has sent a letter to Washington state’s congressional delegation urging them to look at Border Patrol operations.
“We are writing to express our support for the recent letter sent to your offices by community organizations in the Olympic Peninsula and Whatcom and Skagit counties regarding discriminatory actions by the U.S. Border Patrol,” the letter said.
“We join in their call for you and your offices to take concrete actions to address the concerns of community members in those regions.
“In the letter dated August 25, 2011, community leaders outlined the troubling actions they are seeing in their regions: U.S. Border Patrol agents engaging in pre-textual stops of Latino individuals; Border Patrol agents purporting to serve as interpreters in routine law enforcement matters but triggering immigration enforcement actions instead; and local law enforcement agents triggering immigration enforcement by Border Patrol without justification.
“We share the concerns raised by the community leaders in their letter and we are particularly troubled by the fact that the kind of aggressive enforcement activities we are seeing in our state appear to be wholly inconsistent with the Administration’s stated priorities regarding immigration enforcement.”
Port Angeles arrest
The letter from the 21 groups, which included the American Civil Liberties Union, added:
“We also note that press coverage of an incident in Port Angeles earlier this month suggests that the Border Patrol is engaging in racial profiling of not only Latinos but other people of color.”
It cited a Sept. 3 story in the Peninsula Daily News about a man arrested at the Saturday farmers market at The Gateway pavilion in Port Angeles.
Bystanders said no one else at the market was questioned about their immigration status.
The Border Patrol’s Blaine Sector office, which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties, said a South Korean national, Hung Han, 37, was arrested “after receiving a citizen’s report of a suspicious person.”
Han was taken to U.S. Customs & Immigration Enforcement at ICE’s Tacoma Northwest Detention Center pending a deportation hearing before a federal immigration court in Seattle.
The letter from the groups came on the eve of a meeting planned today between congressional staffers and Border Patrol Blaine Sector chief John Bates.
Staff members from the offices of U.S. Sens. Patty Murray, D-Bothell, and Maria Cantwell, D-Mountlake Terrace, and from U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks will ask for an explanation of the Border Patrol’s mission on the North Olympic Peninsula when they meet with Bates in Seattle.
Dicks, a Democrat from Belfair whose 6th Congressional District includes Clallam and Jefferson counties, said Saturday that he did not know what time the meeting will be or its location.
In the past few years, the Border Patrol has increased the number of agents in Washington by a few hundred agents and stepped up some operations, such as inspections of buses and ferries.
Even so, arrests of illegal immigrants have gone down since 2001 from about 2,000 to just below 700.
The Border Patrol has argued it is conducting its job of enforcing the nation’s immigration law and welcomes input from the community.
