The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) today filed a formal complaint with the federal government over the practice of allowing U.S. Border Patrol agents to be used as translators.
The complaint — made to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security — details an April traffic stop in Spokane in which a man was detained, according to a copy of the complaint.
After pulling over a man identified only by the initials "K.L.," the police officer had a conversation about speeding and said he would issue K.L. a verbal warning. Despite having clear communication, the officer requested the Border Patrol come and provide language assistance, according to the complaint. Based on "reasonable suspicion," the Border Patrol detained the man.
"The [Border Patrol report] does not explain exactly what they had a 'reasonable suspicion' about, and it also does not explain what factors or information led to them having a reasonable suspicion," the complaint states.
K.L. is currently being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, according to the report.
The Immigrant Rights Project alleges that using Border Patrol agents as translators violates Title 6 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and that only Spanish-speaking people are subject to having Border Patrol agents show up for translation, according to the complaint.
The complaint follows a recent ACLU lawsuit regarding alleged racial profiling on the Olympic Peninsula, as well as the revelation that Border Patrol drones fly in airspace over Spokane. NWIRP also released recordings of the interactions between Border Patrol agents and law enforcement related to a Bellingham incident that's also included in the complaint. Watch it below.
Stay tuned for more on this.
For more City Hall Eyeball, go here.
First, Let´s start with an issue of education for the Washington´s finest, the Washington State Patrol. It is called "interpretation", not translation. Translation is the transformation of written word from one language to another. Interpretation is the oral conversion of one language to another.
Second, at not point in this video does the Homeland Security agent (aka: Border Patrol) interpret anything. He goes about his business on his own, unmonitored by the Washington State Patrol officer who is engaged in a distracting, unprofessional conversation with the other Homeland Security agent. Were he interpreting, the WSP officer would have been standing beside the Border Patrol agent who would have interpreted fully and completely the WSP officers questions and commands in Spanish to the three non-English speakers and the Border Patrol agent would then have interpreted the three individuals Spanish-language responses fully and completely back to the WSP officer in English.
Third, the Homeland Security agent uses racist language in referring to these individuals as "wet", i.e., wetbacks.
Fourth, the Homeland Security agent essentially tells the Washington State Patrol officer how to do her job so as to facilitate them doing theirs and she agrees.
These are just a few of the problems with the situation. This is clearly a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The State of Washington uses this video in training its employees and if the WSP officer has not seen it, she should do so immediately. http://vimeo.com/6123163
But on a larger scale here in Spokane, here are further concerns with the Border Patrol operations in Spokane:
Reflecting observations and concerns of others about the recently very visible presence of the Border Patrol in Spokane and reflecting the increasing integration of Washington State into the Secure Communities scheme of the US Department of Homeland Security, I want to share an incident I observed on 4/13/12 on my lunch hour, on the way back to my office.
At 1:14 pm, I pulled the borrowed truck of my friend over on Knox Avenue. I had come back around the block after seeing someone I know, a white Anglo-Saxon male involved with Occupy Spokane, seated on the steps of an apartment building in the presence of a uniformed Spokane Police officer and two uniformed Border Patrol agents. I saw the SPD officer hand a paper to the man which the man appeared to sign and then handed back to the officer. About then a large unmarked Chevy SUV with Washington plates 933TIH arrived and parked in front of the apartment building. A plain-clothed man crossed the street and took full front, 45% angle, and side view photos of the man´s face. This officer-photographer then returned to his car, joined briefly by the uniformed SPD officer, and then drove off. The young man stood up shortly afterwards and took several steps west as if he were going to cross Howard before turning around and returning to the apartment building. In the presence of the three officials, he opened the door with his key and entered the building. The police officer and the two Border Patrol agents spent several minutes talking in front of the building. I left and dropped my friend´s truck off before starting to walk back to work. I jotted down the vehicle number of the Border Patrol vehicle (# M73806 painted on the side). The police car, license plate number 3303D, passed me as I walked north on Stevens. As I rounded the corner of Stevens and Knox, the Border Patrol vehicle was also leaving, turning north on Howard. A young woman leaning out of a window of the building expressed to me her confusion as to what was going on and her concern for the presence of the Border Patrol. I told her I agree with her concern and suggested she google Secure Communities.
This situation goes along with observations and concerns by other community members about increasing Border Patrol presence in the Spokane area. Questions prompted by this incident and others like it are:
1) What is the operating agreement between the Spokane Police Department and the US Department of Homeland Security and its entities such as ICE and the Border Patrol?
2) Why are Border Patrol agents accompanying Spokane Police officers? Are they just another back-up law enforcement agency called by the SPD when that other agency is nearby?
3) Beyond their immigration and border protection functions, are Border Patrol agents operating in other non-immigration, non-border enforcement Homeland Security capacities, such as intelligence gathering, surveillance, arrest and detention, etc?
4) Exactly what type of information sharing is being done between the SPD (and other area law enforcement) and the Border Patrol and its affiliates and parent agency.
I am looking for any information on sightings of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents or vehicles in the Spokane area. The two links following are examples of community documentation of the issue:
1) A vehicle (M73806) belonging to DHS US Customs and Border Protection in front of the River Park Square on 3/25/12. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=411095165569832&set=a.392092107470138.96071.100000080557601&type=3&theate
2) A wider angle shot of the same DHS vehicle at the same time and place. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=411095102236505&set=a.392092107470138.96071.100000080557601&type=3&theate
The issue of the Border Patrol operating in our community was brought up at the City Council´s community meeting at Sacajawea Junior High on 4/17/12. Council member Mike Allen stated that he and other members of the council were unaware of the Border Patrol agents operations in the Spokane community until a Public Safety Committee meeting the week before. The SPD can deny direct contact if they would like. They are having direct contact in the field and it is not plausible in the least that SPD officer are involved in the field daily with Homeland Security (i.e., Border Patrol) agents and there is no contact by SPD command. Harpman Hatter does have an e-mail which I have read in which Border Patrol Supervisory Agent James Frackleton writes that Border Patrol involvement with the SPD "includes providing other agencies backup when needed" and commented in regard to the March 25 photos and other documentation of the Border Patrol at the RiverPark Square Mall in response to Occupy that "Agents responded to SPD radio traffic requesting assistance in removing squatters in the area of mall property". This is extremely troubling. Basically we have an agency that engages in immigration enforcement, a very controversial agency with its own history of severe misconduct, now monitoring our local police radio and choosing when and where to appear on the scene. Please watch and share this PBS video of the Border Patrol killing of Anastasio Rojas. Let´s get this clear - these Homeland Security agents are now roaming the streets of our community. Why? Please document and report all sightings and contacts with the US Homeland Security and any of its components (ICE, Border Patrol, etc) in and around Spokane.
http://act.presente.org/sign/anastasio/?akid=578.112236.JbNvLA&rd=1&t=4
I understand that the issue came up in a meeting with the Spokane Police Ombudsman several weeks ago. My description at the link above asks some of the questions I have about this collaboration under what is called "Secure Communities". I want some answers NOW about exactly what role the SPD is playing with DHS in this operation and vice versa.
Please add your observations, comments, concerns and other questions raised for you by increased Secure Communities and Border Patrol activities in the community. If you have observed the Border Patrol in action locally, either with or without the SPD and other law enforcement, I would be interested in the details. I believe this is a very important issue that we should be paying attention to and addressing.
On April 23, I spoke in open forum at City Hall about Homeland Security´s Border Patrol agents roaming our community, scanning police radio communications and deciding where and when to show up. Just prior, Tim Burns, Spokane Police Ombudsman, briefly mentioned the issue in his April 2012 report to City Council. He had met the previous day with the Assistant Border Patrol Chief in the Spokane sector. Council woman McLaughlin - showing typical lack of insight - asked if the Border Patrol could be asked to attend a council meeting in June. June! To his credit, after I spoke and suggested that June would be three months too late, Council President Ben Stuckart indicated that it would be addressed sooner. It is going to be up to the community to express its objections to these Homeland Security agents in our community. I encourage others to keep the issue before the city, police, press and organizations such as Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the ACLU, the Center for Justice, the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, the Spokane Police Accountability and Reform Coalition and the Spokane Police Ombudsman. The text of my 3 minute remarks follows:
My concern tonight is the recent full implementation in Spokane of the US Department of Homeland Security´s so-called "Secure Communities Initiative". This initiative has several US Customs and Border Protection agents - commonly called Border Patrol - roaming our community and showing up at routine, non-immigration related police stops. According to e-mail correspondence from Supervisory Border Patrol agent James Frackleton and written correspondence from interim Spokane Police Chief Stevens, there is (and I find this entirely implausible) no communication or cooperation between the two agencies. Furthermore, Homeland Security agents, in the person of the Border Patrol, are simply monitoring Spokane police radio traffic and deciding when and where to show up.
I am aware of two specific incidents. The first was March 25 when Border Patrol agents, according to Supervisory agent Frackleton and contradicted by SPD Chief Stevens, (quote) responded to SPD radio traffic requesting assistance in removing squatters in the area of River Park Mall property (end quote). Leaving aside the fact that the so-called "squatters" were political protestors on public property, why should federal agents operating under one of the numerous national security laws be involved in a political protest on public property? Perhaps because so-called national security laws are taking us in the direction of a "police state" in which political protest is now considered outlaw behavior. The second incident on April 13 at Knox and Howard which I witnessed involved the same Border Patrol agents and their vehicle M73806 at the scene of a minor domestic incident.
The Secure Communities program changes how information is handled, running every single person arrested in Washington through an incomplete and error-ridden federal data base - resulting in some people being flagged, detained and turned over to federal agents even if they committed no crime. Worse, it throws into the mix of the abusive Spokane Police Department an historically troubled and abusive Federal agency operating unbeknownst to the vast majority of Spokane citizenry. In fact, until 1 1/2 weeks ago some if not all of the Spokane City Council were unaware of this program, as Councilman Allen admitted at Sacajawea Junior High last week.
The presence of this agency roaming through our community is also hugely problematic to our immigrant communities, virtually all of whom are law-abiding, hard-working members of our community. Throughout the country, Secure Communities and police state practices have damaged and destroyed trust of immigrant communities and of the broader community in local law enforcement. Please go to ACLU Washington webpage, sign their petition and express your concerns about this unmonitored, unaccountable presence in the community. And I will stay, June is at least 3 months too late for the Border Patrol to be brought before the City Council. Questions prompted by these incidents include:
1) What is the operating agreement between the Spokane Police department and the US Department of Homeland Security and its entities such as ICE and the Border Patrol?
2) Why are Border Patrol agents accompanying Spokane Police officers? Are they just another back-up law enforcement agency called by the SPD? Is the SPD that short of staff?
3) Beyond their immigration and border protection functions, are Border Patrol agents operating in other non-immigration , non=-border enforcement Homeland Security capacities, such as intelligence gathering, surveillance, arrest and detention, etc.?
4) Exactly what type of information sharing is being done between the SPD and the Border Patrol and its affiliates and parent agency?
I encourage all Spokane citizens to ask these and other questions and to demand answers.
David Brookbank May 02, 2012 | Reply to this comment