NYT: No Need for a Warrant, You’re an Immigrant

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/weekinreview/14preston.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


Pool photo by Michael Schwartz

DIFFERENT RULES A federal raid aimed at illegal immigrants in Long Island last month angered local officials who objected to the lack of warrants.

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: October 14, 2007

LONG ISLAND officials protested when federal agents searching for immigrant gang members raided local homes two weeks ago. The agents had rousted American citizens and legal immigrants from their beds in the night, complained Lawrence W. Mulvey, the Nassau County police commissioner, and arrested suspected illegal immigrants without so much as a warrant.

“We don’t need warrants to make the arrests,” responded Peter J. Smith, the special agent in charge in New York for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the agency that conducted the raids.

His concise answer helps explain the friction that the Bush administration’s recent campaign of immigration enforcement has caused. Last week, immigration officials announced that they had made more than 1,300 arrests across the country over the summer when they went looking for gang members. Since the raids were carried out under immigration law, many protections in place under the American criminal codes did not apply. Foreign residents of the United States, whether here legally or not, answer to a different set of rules.

Immigration agents are not required to obtain warrants to detain suspects. The agents also have broad authority to question people about their immigration status and to search them and their homes. There are no Miranda rights that agents must read when making arrests. Detained immigrants have the right to a lawyer, but only one they can pay for.

While criminal suspects are generally sent to jails near the courts that hear their cases, immigration agents have discretion in deciding where to hold immigrants detained for deportation. Many suspected illegal immigrants who were detained in Nassau County, for example, were quickly moved to York, Pa., distant from family and legal advice.

This parallel course for noncitizens is not new. But it has come into fuller view as the enforcement drive has swept up record numbers of illegal immigrants, also reaching legal immigrants and citizens. In answer, a barrage of lawsuits is challenging both the laws and their enforcers.

FULL story at link.