LATINOS PROTEST ETHNIC PROFILING

Complaints Mount Against Immigration And Police Officers

Sylvia Baez was shocked when the Border Patrol agent explained why he
stopped her family on a San Diego freeway near Tierrasanta.

"You look Mexican, and you were driving with a Chula Vista license plate,"
Baez, a lawyer, remembers the agent saying.

What happened to Baez six years ago is better known now as racial or ethnic
profiling, and civil rights and minority groups say it continues to be
pervasive.

Latinos talk about the hazards of "driving while brown," just as
African-Americans complain of being stopped for "driving while black."

Both groups say their appearance makes them more likely than whites to be
stopped for minor traffic violations that lead to fishing expeditions for
drugs.

But the immigration-related stop is a distinctly Latino experience,
particularly in the Southwest, where millions of Latinos live near the
U.S.-Mexico border.

"It's an add-on for Latinos," said John Crew of the American Civil
Liberties Union.

Mario Conte of Federal Defenders of San Diego, a nonprofit law firm,
suspects that most Latinos who are stopped for lengthy questioning don't
talk about it.

"There are a lot of Hispanics who live close to the border who on a daily
basis may be encountering this kind of activity even though they are not
doing anything wrong," Conte said.

"We don't hear about these people. The only ones we read about are those
who are stopped and there is contraband inside their cars."

Mexicans accounted for 98 percent of the Border Patrol's 1.5 million
arrests on the Southwest border last year.

In San Diego County, all but 1,111 of the 182,267 arrests made last year by
the Border Patrol involved Mexican citizens.

But Roy Villareal, spokesman for the San Diego Border Patrol, said those
figures reflect the reality of the Border Patrol's job: Most of the people
trying to cross into the United States at the Mexico border -- legally or
illegally -- are Mexican. So more Mexicans than whites are being stopped.

"It looks like we're targeting that ethnicity. But the case is, that
happens to be our customer," Villareal said.

Most illegal immigrants are stopped at land ports, checkpoints, canyons and
desert areas near the border.

San Diego County's various law enforcement agencies also turn over illegal
immigrants they encounter when investigating criminal complaints, he said.

No one knows how many Latinos are questioned without being arrested,
because until recently nobody was gathering those figures.

In mid-June, however, the Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement
agencies nationwide were told to gather that data for a one-year "Fairness
in Law Enforcement" project ordered by President Clinton.

The Border Patrol will collect racial and ethnic data from everyone
referred to secondary inspection at four stations in the Southwest,
including the checkpoint near San Clemente.

Each motorist's race, ethnicity, gender and citizenship will be noted. So
will the reason for the referral and whether an arrest was made.

Immigration and Naturalization Service inspectors also are collecting data
at the El Paso, Texas, Port of Entry and at airports in Houston, Seattle
and New York.

Latino power

The federal project isn't focused on Latinos, but it comes at a time when
Latinos are becoming the nation's largest minority group and the largest
group in certain parts of the country.

One-fifth of the nation's 32 million Hispanics live in Southern California.
In 20 years, about 60 percent of Southern California will be Latino. By
2040, Latinos will be the largest group in California, making up 40 percent
of the population.

The burgeoning growth of the Latino population figured into an April
decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

It ruled that Border Patrol agents couldn't consider -- even partly --
"Hispanic appearance" when deciding whether to stop motorists near the El
Centro checkpoint.

Although the court upheld the drug convictions of the two Mexicans who
challenged the verdicts, it said using their ethnicity as a criteria to
stop them wasn't valid, because more than 70 percent of Imperial County's
population is Latino.

Last year, the 9th Circuit also ruled that the Border Patrol can be sued
for stopping drivers because they look Hispanic. The Hispanics who filed
that suit did not seek damages -- their goal was to halt such stops.

Villareal said agents are trained to study behavior and not to rely on
ethnic appearance.

"Do they appear nervous? Do they appear apprehensive?" he said. "We look
for suspicious behavior."

Complaints up 8%

The INS, which has 30,000 employees, last year received 4,551 complaints
nationwide, up 8 percent from the previous year.

Some 43 percent of the complaints were made by INS employees against each
other. About 10 percent were allegations of abuse or civil rights
violations. And about 6 percent were allegations of rude or discourteous
conduct toward the public.

Twenty INS employees were disciplined for civil rights abuses, compared
with 33 the previous year.

The number of complaints is a "very small fraction" when considering the
"universe of people" encountered by immigration officers each day, said INS
spokesman Greg Gagne.

But perceptions are hard to erase.

"It's a reality, and it's our reality because they don't do it to anybody
else," said Roberto Martinez, 63, director of the American Friends Service
Committee's border watchdog program in San Diego.

"African-Americans have it bad, but they don't have to deal with federal
immigration agents like we do," said Martinez, adding that as a teen
growing up in San Diego he was stopped frequently by immigration officers.

'I was scared'

Benjamin Perez is a short, stocky Mexican immigrant and a naturalized U.S.
citizen who volunteers as a firefighter. He lives in the East County border
community of Jacumba, where the Border Patrol has been active since
Operation Gatekeeper, the San Diego border crackdown that began in 1994.

Perez, 50, a train mechanic, said his encounters with Border Patrol agents
have ranged from minor inconveniences to major headaches.

Two years ago, he was stopped three times while driving from Jacumba to
nearby Boulevard, he said. "Three different cars. I thought: 'What's going
on? They don't have radios?' "

Last year, he was stopped near his home by a sheriff's deputy at the
request of an agent who accused him of failing to stop when he turned on
his lights and siren, Perez said. The deputy, aided by a drug-sniffing dog,
searched his 1980 Camaro.

"I was scared. They thought I had drugs," Perez said. "I felt like a criminal."

He was released but cited for evading an officer, he said.

Despite these experiences, Perez doesn't see himself as the victim of
ethnic profiling.

"They (Border Patrol agents) stopped my neighbor, who is white. They
followed him home," the soft-spoken Perez said.

Stopped for questioning

Anami Gonzalez, a U.S.-born citizen raised in Mexico who does not speak
English well, isn't quite so understanding.

She often walks across the border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, and on
several occasions she's been sent to the secondary inspection. She thinks
she knows why.

"I have a strong accent and get nervous when I speak," she said.

Usually, it takes Gonzalez less than 30 minutes to clear things up. But on
the night of April 2, when she and her 16-year-old daughter, Yvette, were
returning home after a day in Tijuana, her usual explanations didn't work.

An immigration inspector waved Yvette through. But he sent Gonzalez to a
room for more questioning.

Yvette wanted to stay with her mother, Gonzalez said, but instead she was
told to wait outside the port building.

Gonzalez said when she asked an inspector about her daughter, he was
unsympathetic.

"He told me I was nobody to be asking questions and didn't have any
rights," she stated in a complaint that she has filed with the INS.

"He snapped his fingers and told me to admit I was a Mexican citizen."

Two hours later, when Gonzalez was released, she found her daughter crying
outside.

The INS is investigating Gonzalez's complaint. But Virginia Kice,
spokeswoman for the INS, said that to detect fraudulent documents,
inspectors have to stop people and ask questions.

Since Oct. 1, more than 33,000 people, mostly Mexicans, have been turned
back at the San Ysidro Port of Entry for using fake documents, falsely
claiming they're U.S. citizens or hiding inside vehicles, according to the INS.

Facing opposition

Law enforcement officials generally have resisted plans that require them
to record the race and ethnicity of every motorist they stop.

They say laws are in place to protect people who feel they've been
harassed, and that collecting the extra data is burdensome to officers.

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, called the
new requirements "a waste of time."

"Our people are well-trained. They don't stop people because of the way
they look. They look at a number of reasons," he said.

Bonner also worries that if the surveys provide negative information, it
would be "giving people ammunition to close the checkpoint" near San
Clemente. He says the checkpoint is an important one, with agents making
6,000 arrests and seizing 13 tons of drugs there in the last fiscal year.

Civil rights groups and others support the new data-collection plan.

These kinds of comprehensive statistical studies are needed to better
analyze the issue, said Robert Klitgaard, a dean at the Rand Graduate
School who advises governments on institutional reform.

Looking at the numbers

Klitgaard says it's only logical that Latinos are the ones most frequently
stopped at the border.

But he's curious about how often these stops lead to arrests and how much
inconvenience they're causing for innocent people.

"If there is a high stop rate, low (arrest) rate and high traumatizing
rate, that's bad news," said Klitgaard, at a recent state conference that
addressed racial profiling. "If it's a low stop rate, high success rate and
minor inconvenience, then you have to consider saying it's OK."

Local and state police departments around the nation are struggling with
similar issues.

The San Diego Police Department has been collecting race and ethnicity data
from every motorist stopped since the beginning of the year. It plans to
release results of the six-month study later this month.

The Chula Vista Police Department plans to do a similar study beginning
later this year.

Sylvia Baez said it will take a lot to convince her that immigration
officers don't engage in ethnic profiling.

Last year, she had another encounter with the INS when she was driving from
Tijuana with relatives who are U.S. citizens. Instead of being waved
across, as most cars are at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, she spent 30
minutes at the secondary inspection area.

Baez wondered why her group was singled out from the other Mexicans
crossing the border that day.

"I don't know why they did it. Maybe it's just a common experience. Part of
me always thinks, though, that they do it because we're Mexicanos."