Subject: Fabian Núñez, Assembly Members Call on Chertoff to Halt Unconstitutional Raids 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 violations 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