Racial Profiling in Sonoma County

On September 5, 2008, the ACLU of Northern California filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of three individual plaintiffs and the Committee for Immigrant Rights of Sonoma County, a grassroots community organization. The case, filed against Sonoma County, ICE, and several individual officers, alleges Fourth Amendment, due process, equal protection, and a number of statutory claims stemming from the Sonoma County Sheriff ’s practice of collaborating with ICE to arrest and detain young Latino men in the County jail based on suspected immigration status and without any criminal charges. In addition to unlawful seizure and racial profiling claims, plaintiffs allege that the scheme unlawfully postpones notice of the detainees’ rights to a hearing, counsel, and bond determination and challenges the validity of the federal regulation upon which the practice of holding arrestees in jail without criminal charges is based. The case seeks injunctive and declaratory relief, as well as damages for the three individual plaintiffs. This case is currently in discovery and motions to dismiss filed by county, ICE, and federal defendants are pending.

Source: The Persistence Of Racial And Ethnic Profiling In The United States by ACLU and Rights Working Group (August 2009)