According to a statement issued by the SoCal ACLU, the lawsuit is based upon alleged violations by ICE of the Freedom of Information Act. The ACLU claims ICE failed to fulfill a records request originally filed in September 2018 seeking information regarding possible cooperation between ICE and UP Police to detain individuals.
The ACLU alleges that on different occasions, UP Police detain individuals longer than allowed by law after making contact with the individuals near railroad property, and held them for several hours until representatives from ICE could arrive to take them into federal custody. In one alleged incident in February 2018, the ACLU claims a female was detained by UP Police two hours before being turned over to ICE and being taken into custody without having her Fifth Amendment rights read to her. The incidents cited in the lawsuit are alleged to have occurred in several locations in southern California.
The ACLU claims the alleged actions by UP Police have been rooted in racial profiling, and the work between ICE and UP Police has been shrouded in secrecy.
A statement from Union Pacific to NBC4 in Los Angeles says protecting the railroad’s property is a priority regardless of the immigration status of any potential offender.
In a letter accompanying the lawsuit, the ACLU and several other groups are demanding Union Pacific Police cut ties with ICE.
The ACLU is a one sided organization that is extremely progressive and totally one political party. Can someone tell me how an individual entering this country is conferred Constitutional rights? This is how twisted this country has become. ICE should deport these folks as fast as they are caught, but unfortunately Congress has illegally usurped the Constitution in my opinion, by passing passing unconstitutional laws. This is the new America.
Railroads have always protected their own property for years. And if they are illegals, they need to be turned over to ICE. We can’t just let anyone come in any longer, it’s not like it was in old days when immigrants came, like my ancestors from Ireland, Germany and Poland. There are too many criminals and terrorists who try to sneak in under cover with other immigrants. That has been documented in Europe and could happen here too. What about the pilots of 9-11, that should have set off a red flag when they only wanted to learn how to take off in a plane and not land it. But no one paid any attention and tragedy happened.
Can hardly wait for the Wall.
Mister Privara:
I beg to differ, Sir. I can think of many organizations, from the Symbionese Liberation Army to the Klan to the American Nazi Party which, with all respect, are anti-government and still should not be supported.
Now, as I write this it is a fact that I am barefoot and in the kitchen making lunch for my hubby. My status concerning the rest of the phrase is not your business.
The above comments are general in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn lawyer.
Anna Harding: “You are right and I am wrong. You said it, therefore it must be so, therefore that settles it.” I’m glad that you recognize the truth when you see it!
ACLU data from “open secrets” https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000031473
Any organization that is anti-government deserves support.
If I remember correctly, the ACLU donated $25 Million to the Democratic party for the 2018 elections and none to the Republicans or any other party. Any reasonable person would know that eliminates their claim to represent people of all political beliefs. Also, I know someone who was involved with them for some years but no longer cares to be because they have drifted too far away from their original mission. Her opinion is that some of the local chapters still perform on a traditional liberal basis but the national organization and a majority of the local chapters have come under the control of the far left and are no longer upholding the organization’s founding goals.
Mister McGuire:
You are right and I am wrong. You said it, therefore it must be so, therefore that settles it.
What in hell do I know anyway? I’m just a dumb housewife in a small town somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line.
The above comments are general in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn lawyer.
Michael Valentine: It is your comment that is totally rubbish, Charles comment is the correct one. There may have been a time when the ACLU was an organization that helped people regardless of their political persuasion but no more. They have recently come out of the closet and stated that they are now only going to represent those on the left side of the political spectrum. The only time I heard of the ACLU doing anything good was a few years ago when a high school student wore a T-shirt to school with a controversial Nazi expression on it. The school suspended the student and his family sued. They were represented by the ACLU. They said they did not approve of the T-shirt saying but defended the student’s right to wear it. I never learned the outcome of the case. The ACLU of today is a domestic terrorist organization and will come after anyone or organization that does not agree with the radical left.
There is nothing American about the aclu – they are supporting people who chose to ignore & break a law – so imagine over 300 million Americans all deciding they too should be able to freely choose a law to ignore & break???….and the liberals have to support their decision to break a law equally….rape, murder, robbery ,car theft, etc…
Mister Lueck:
Actually the allegation is that the UP Police are detaining not only people they find on UP property (legitimate, they should not be there) but also people they find nearby but not on UP property and actually on public property such as underpasses or bicycle paths. This is the first issue.
The second issue is that whether or not the person they are detaining is on UP property or not, allegedly they are detaining the person for an extended period of time, sometimes as much as several hours or more, while they contact INS for the purpose of surrendering that person to INS.
If proven there are serious Fourth Amendment violations taking place here. But, this is El Monte and the police there are a fairly lawless bunch. What the ACLU wants at this point in time is, and as a police force they are required to, to comply with the FOIA request that they have been given and, so far, ignored.
What happens after that we shall have to see.
The above comments are general in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn lawyer.
As for the ACLU being politically neutral, a recent 60 Minutes presentation of their TV political advertisements against certain candidates suggested otherwise. I suspect that they will finanace such political TV ads in the upcoming 2020 elections.
Mister McGuire: I do recognize the truth, and I also recognize what this implies concerning the author of such a remark. So tell me good Sir: is your disgust with me because I am female, because of my profession, or because I have concerns similar to those of the ACLU? Or it some combination thereof?
The above comments are general in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn lawyer.
Right on Mr. McGuire!
TO OURSELVES!
Same posters, same devisive political crap. Can’t we stick to railroad related issues and keep the partisan politics?
Oh, the ACLU and California. Why can’t ICE just be able to to their job without having these yahoos underfoot?
I hope that some day I have the opportunity to sue the ACLU which should be considered a domestic terrorist organization. They are never on the side of the hard working citizens of this country but rather the criminals and deadbeats and, as this post points out, the illegal aliens. I put them in the same category as unions, environmentalists, NIMBYs, liberals and other bottom feeders.
The previous comment: Charles Landey that the ACLU is an ultra ultra ultra leftist political organization. This is absolute rubbish: the ACLU protects the liberties guaranteed to citizens by the founding fathers enshrined in the US Constitution. Sometimes it is to the left and sometimes to the right. The ACLU a few years defended a well known railroad magazine editor that was illegally arrested for taking railroad photographs in a completely legal manor. Had it not been for the ACLU, your rights would also be taken away. So enough of the garbage comments that its purely a political organization: utter nonsense!
I think that the point that at least some of the posters here are missing regarding the ACLU, or anything else, is that the UP police are detaining people who, by the fact that they are being detained by the UP police, are guilty of some sort of legal trespass to start with. UP is policing its own property and is not general law enforcement per se. What UP police do with trespassers on UP property is entirely up to them and no one else. It is their call and theirs alone whether to turn trespassers over to the local law enforcement, ICE or simply let them go. This is not about good cops or bad cops or whether or not UP police personnel harass railfan photographers or are friendly or not friendly. It is simply about the fact that UP as a private property owner has the absolute right to deal with trespassers on its property as it sees fit.
The ACLU is attempting to dictate to private property owners how they should handle trespassers on that private property. They have NO business attempting to do that in a free society.
Mister Landey:
On such subjects as this one we tend to disagree, but that does not mean that each of is entitled to his opinion. You are, as am I.
However.
I have had experience with Southern California law enforcement over the years, and if there is one thing I have learned they have little regard for the rights of their subjects … one can not say citizens, due to the way the police treat people – and even less regard for the rights afforded in law by both the State and Federal Constitutions.
There are those who call them “jackbooted thugs”. I will keep my opinion to myself … but …
There is an immigration checkpoint in Temecula on I-15, about sixty miles north of San Diego. It is not, theoretically, for the purpose of general law enforcement but you can’t tell the Border Patrol that. In one incident I was relieved of my wristwatch by a Border Patrol agent who then commented, and this is a direct quote, “I can do anything I want. I own every street in every town in every state in America. President Clinton told me so.”
There have been cases there where even if you produce a current US passport (deemed to be conclusive proof of citizenship 22 USC 2705 in the 5th, 8th and 9th Circuits, contested elsewhere) they would take it away and load you on the bus anyway. Then jeer and mock you as they push you into Mexico.
The ACLU is one of the organizations (there are others) which attempt to quash this kind of behaviour by law enforcement agents. However in SoCal it is so ubiquitious, so rampant, that they have their work cut out for them. But if this is the kind of law enforcement you want – and will accept when they work themselves down to you – then by all means, have at it.
The above comments are general in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn lawyer.
Mister Foster:
I have lived in Pennsylvania – Bucks County, specifically, and I have never had any problems with law enforcement in Pennsylvania. They do their job and to my observation they understand that they enforce the law, they are not the law. Where I now live I am known personally by the police in the area, and they are always happy to see me, as I am happy to see them. They are honest folk.
I grew up poor in a (to borrow the phrase) sanitationally questionable come-as-you-are section of East Los Angeles. Regarding Southern California law enforcement, I know whereof I speak.
Some of the incidents cited in the ACLU complaint happened in a city in the San Gabriel valley known as El Monte. I know El Monte in detail … and wish I didn’t. The citizens of that area are no prize, believe you me, but the law enforcement agencies there are well known to be corrupt and to have no respect for the people they police, and have long since passed the point where they are a solution to the myriad of problems that have beset these areas. They have now come to be part of the problem.
Part of the problem facing that area is that any kind of authority has been so abusive toward such a large segment of the population there that there is no trust. The police look upon the population as “slime” (their words) and the people look upon the police in particular and government officials in general as nothing more than an occupying force that can do them no good.
I have no solutions to the situation. The trust between citizen and law enforcement agency once broken, is not easily re-established. But perhaps one good place to start is by asking the police to obey the same laws they are enforcing, something not currently happening in these areas. It won’t fix everything – but it might help.
The above comments are general in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn lawyer.
Ronald were are commenting on an article on the subject of an ultra ultra ultra leftist political organization, so we make political comments.
ACLU has dropped the pretense – the false mask – that it was a neutral do-gooder organization out to protect everyone’s rights. Now it openly presents itself as it really has been all along – a far-left political action group out to destabilize and to undermine the United States.
For Robert McGuire to call ACLU bottom feeders, I’m quite confident that if he were to re-do his post he’d not be so forgiving.
Anna, I guess we live in 2 different worlds. Both the local police and the PA State Police where I live are both respected and professional–and considered the good guys by everyone other than the criminals.
Mister Landey:
There is a typo in what I wrote. The sentence should read but that does not mean that each of us is not entitled to his opinion. You are, as am I. The intent was to recognize that you have the right to speak your mind.
My apologies.
AH
The above comments are general in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn lawyer.