Posted on 06/05/2012 9:23:47 AM PDT by Hunton Peck
A federal department ruled last week that the Forest Service violated a Spanish-speaking woman’s civil rights by calling the Border Patrol to help translate during a routine stop, saying it was “humiliating” to Hispanics and an illicit backdoor way to capture more illegal immigrants.
The ruling by the Agriculture Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights could change policies nationwide as law enforcement agencies grapple with how far they can go in trying to help the Border Patrol while not running afoul of racial profiling standards.
Assistant Secretary Joe Leonard Jr. said calling the Border Patrol automatically “escalates” encounters between Hispanics and law enforcement. He ruled that the Forest Service cannot routinely summon the Border Patrol for assistance and said the agency now must document suspected racial profiling nationwide.
“Given the increased risk of being questioned about immigration status during an interaction with [Border Patrol], the policy of using BP for interpretation assistance is problematic in all situations because it places a burden on [limited English proficient] individuals that non-LEP individuals do not experience,” Mr. Leonard ruled.
The case stems from a 2011 incident in Olympic National Forest in Washington in which a Forest Service officer encountered a Hispanic couple who he said appeared to be illegally harvesting plants on the federal lands.
The couple didn’t speak English and he didn’t speak fluent Spanish and, anticipating that situation, he called the Border Patrol for backup and translating.
But when a Border Patrol agent arrived, the couple fled. The woman was apprehended, but the man jumped into a river to try to escape and drowned. The Border Patrol took the woman into custody but released her several days later, reportedly on humanitarian grounds.
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project complained to the Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest Service, and last week’s...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
If anyone comes to the conclusion that Jamaicans have been betrayed by their own government, they will be correct.
Total cr*p, I say. And nothing will change under Romney regarding this illegal alien problem.
Suicidal insanity, brought to us naturally by the baroc administration. That man is conciously working to destroy this country.
Of course not.
I had to take a double-take on that first sentence. My first presumed it was some federal judge or court. What a sad state of affairs when we are "ruled" by unelected federal bureaucrats.
BS. The slow death of a country.
Wish I had a recorder phone as about 2 weeks ago a highway construction project was holding up traffic for around FOUR miles. When I got to the hold up, it was just break time. I told the guy who walked up to my car that this was ridiculous to hold up traffic for nothing. He and every guy around was Hispanic. Guess what, he responded to me in SPANISH!! I told him this is America, speak ENGLISH. Well, he continued in Spanish so I told them all to go home where they are understod! Thanks Barak and others for using my stimulus dollars on illegal labor.
We are sliding down a glass tube with others taking our money and running.
The couple was gathering salal which is use in floral arranging and landscaping. You need a permit to take it from federals lands and they didn’t have one.
As far as the Border Patrol being far away from the border, the area in question is not far from Port Angeles, a port of entry from Canada, where Amad or Ahmed Somebody was arrested for trying to sneak in explosives to do a terror bombing on New Years, 2000. So, calling BP for back-up or translation is a prudent thing to do IMO, and the fact that they had a runner/non-swimmer proves the point.
Interesting background. Thanks!
“...Agriculture Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights...”
One of many tens-of-thousands of useless, worthless bureaucrat wastes of US Taxpayers’ hard-earned monies. Eliminate it! Save $120k/yr, dammit! Do the math. The waste is beyond massive.
So just arrest them on the spot and find a translator at the jail...then call BP.
“Escalates” only in the same sense that taking that guy found laying in the gutter to the hospital “escalates” the situation when the doctor discovers he has a serious illness and treats it. If you just left him in the gutter, it never would have been found... of course, he’d have died of it, but it never would have been found.
Rinse, repeat and encourage whistle blowers to come forward with other examples of this gross stupidity and conspiracy to hamstring border enforcement. Because conspiracy is exactly what it is.
This also indicates that the woman was also in the country illegally. So the USFS legally contacts the USBP after making a lawful stop. The USBP takes the alien into custody, an NGO complains to the Dept. of Agriculture and they change longstanding policy without so much as a court order. I am reasonable sure this decision violates a MOU between DHS and the Dept of Agriculture at a minimum if not direct federal law.
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