Two U.S.-born Latinas who were racially profiled, harassed, and unlawfully detained by an out-of-control Customs and Border Protection agent for speaking Spanish while shopping at a Montana convenience store in 2018 have reached a settlement in their lawsuit against the Trump administration, legal advocacy groups announced.
The settlement includes an undisclosed monetary sum, advocates said. But aside from winning some justice for the two women, the lawsuit also continued to expose abuse and racism rampant in the federal immigration agency. “CBP’s behavior was unconscionable and illegal, but sadly not uncommon,” ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project staff attorney Cody Wofsy said. “This agency must be held accountable.”
This nightmare began when CBP agent Paul O’Neill set his sights on Mimi Hernandez and Ana Suda after overhearing them speak Spanish as they were waiting in line to pay for their groceries in 2018. He demanded to see their IDs even as there was absolutely no valid reasoning for it, but they complied. That apparently wasn’t enough for O’Neill, who then proceeded to hold the two in the parking lot as other agents arrived.
The New York Times reports that at one point Suda asked if this would be happening if she and her friend had been speaking French. Of course not, the supervisor replied. It’s clear why the two were targeted, the ACLU said at the time: “[w]hen Ana and Mimi asked why they were being held, he answered unequivocally: Because they were speaking Spanish.”
They were doing nothing wrong but as court documents from the subsequent lawsuit from Hernandez and Suda revealed, agents have in fact “engaged in a longstanding pattern of abusive seizures and investigations” in the area, the ACLU of Montana said.
“Agents from the local administrative CBP unit—known as the ‘Havre Sector’—have repeatedly targeted Latinx individuals without justification, often based on their race,” continued the ACLU of Montana, which sued with the national ACLU and law firm Crowley Fleck PLLP. ”In materials produced as a result of the lawsuit, CBP agents admitted they routinely profile non-white individuals in the Havre Sector. According to a CBP supervisor, ‘We have a lot of agents here and nobody really has much to do.’”
So there’s another thing the lawsuit reveals: the need for fewer agents. And that’s not me saying it, it’s CBP.
“Evidence uncovered in the suit also revealed that O’Neill was a member of the now defunct ‘I’m 10-15’ Facebook group where CBP agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas, and posted a vulgar illustration depicting U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant,” the ACLU of Montana continued.
But following an internal probe where CBP investigated itself, only four agents out of nearly 140 investigated were ultimately fired. An internal document released by the House Oversight Committee further revealed that the agency negotiated deals to lessen the severity of punishment against agents who were part of the vile Facebook group, as a legislator targeted by the group said CBP won’t give her the findings of the investigation.
”Facebook is a cesspool,” Rep. Veronica Escobar said. But so is CBP. “Under the Biden administration, the ACLU will continue to hold the federal government and the Department of Homeland Security accountable to the people,” the group said. “We stood up to the government because speaking Spanish is not a reason to be racially profiled and harassed,” Suda said. “I am proud to be bilingual, and I hope that as a result of this case CBP takes a hard look at its policies and practices. No one else should ever have to go through this again.”