Judge Says Police Had Right To Arrest Day Laborers

Rejecting the argument that a group of day laborers were racially profiled and that local police exceeded its authority making immigration arrests, a federal judge has refused to block the deportation of nine illegal immigrants arrested in Connecticut last year.

The men were nabbed during an undercover operation in which local police and federal immigration officers teamed up to target illegal aliens in Danbury last year. A total of 11 were arrested and two have already been deported to Central America.

Now an Ivy League professor and his students are defending the nine remaining men, arguing that they were racially profiled and that Danbury Police was not authorized to make immigration arrests. The goal is for the illegal aliens, some with criminal records, to remain free in the United States.

But federal immigration Judge Michael Straus did not buy the argument, ruling that the "Danbury Police Department initiated contact with the day laborers because there was significant concern regarding the danger they posed to themselves and others when they loitered and even ran into the road to solicit employment.”

The judge also wrote in his ruling that "solicitation of day labor in our current culture has a strong correlation to undocumented presence in the United States and lack of employment authorization" so it was not unreasonable for police to question the men, nor was it racial profiling.

The ruling declares open season on day laborers, according to one of the attorney’s defending the Danbury illegal aliens, because the judge bought the government’s argument that, based on statistics, the fact that someone is a day laborer is sufficient probable cause to arrest them because a day laborer is probably an illegal immigrant.

The illegal aliens’ lead pro bono Ivy League counsel likened that argument to arresting someone who is black because they are standing near a spot where drug dealers are known to stand.