U.S. to Continue Racial, Ethnic Profiling in Border Policy

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

The Obama administration will soon issue new rules curtailing the use of profiling, but federal agents will still be allowed to consider race and ethnicity when stopping people at airports, border crossings and immigration checkpoints, according to several government officials.

The new policy has been in the works for years and will replace decade-old rules that banned racial profiling for federal law enforcement, but with specific exemptions for national security and border investigations. Immigration enforcement has proved to be the most controversial aspect of the Obama administration’s revisions, and law enforcement officials succeeded in arguing that they should have more leeway in deciding whom to stop and question.

The new rules expand the definition of racial profiling to include religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. Under the rules, law enforcement officials cannot consider any of those factors, along with race, during criminal investigations, or during routine immigration cases away from the border. Agencies whose officers make traffic stops, such as the United States Park Police, may not use them as a reason to pull someone over. The rules will apply to local police assigned to federal task forces, but not local police agencies.

... The effects of any rule change could be felt far from the border with Mexico or Canada. Federal agents have jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws within 100 miles of the borders, including the coastlines, an area that includes roughly a third of the United States, and nearly two-thirds of its population. Federal agents board buses and Amtrak trains in upstate New York, questioning passengers about their citizenship and detaining people who cannot produce immigration papers. Border Patrol agents also run inland checkpoints looking for illegal immigrants. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, has called the existing rules “a license to profile.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/us/politics/obama-to-impose-racial-profiling-curbs-with-exceptions.html

[Nye Bevan]

1. Is it wrong of me to believe that a family returning to Nebraska after a week in Disney World

that was planned and paid for months ago, should be less likely to be scrutinized at the airport than someone from Pakistan who paid cash for a one-way ticket a couple of days ago?