Latest news with #BillofRights'
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oklahoma Voice reporters win awards for reporting, photography at state contest
The Oklahoma Voice logo is pictured. (Oklahoma Voice image) SHAWNEE — Oklahoma Voice over the weekend took home seven awards, including two first place honors, at the Oklahoma Press Association's annual contest. Oklahoma Voice, a nonprofit outlet that focuses on state government coverage, participated in the largest circulation category in the contest that honored the top journalism produced across the state in 2024. Reporter Nuria Martinez-Keel took home first place in the 'Education' category for her reporting that explored how Superintendent Ryan Walters went from 'excited' to 'disgusted' over the social studies standards he helped create. The contest judge said Martinez-Keel provided a 'well written' story that turned a news story into a great news feature. Martinez-Keel also won second place for that reporting in the 'Education Story' category. Editor Janelle Stecklein won first place for column writing for a trio of opinion pieces about Walters' quest to spend $3 million to put Bibles in school classrooms. The second column questioned why Oklahoma has unenforceable laws pertaining to the collection of required data about who is using a state-owned aircraft and why. While the third criticized lawmakers' decision to pass a 'Bill of Rights' to define gender even while women's outcomes lag. The judge said the opinion pieces had 'good voice and (provided) strong commentary on a variety of topics' and had 'strong use of supporting information to make a point.' Senior Reporter Barbara Hoberock won third place in the Feature Story for her interview and story about Yvonne Kauger that highlighted the legacy of the first Oklahoma Supreme Court justice in state history that voters ousted from office. 'When I finished this feature, I knew (Yvonne) Kauger and wanted to meet her,' the judge wrote. 'Good job.' Hoberock also won second place in the News Story category for her reporting about state leaders' unexplained decision to redact information about who in the Governor's Office has been using a state plane for travel and not maintaining purpose of those flights, which appears to flout state law. The judge wrote that Hoberock wrote a 'very detailed story of potential abuse that could happen anywhere.' Martinez-Keel also won second place in the news photography category for her photograph of a mother being arrested at a State Board of Education meeting. Audra Beasley refused to leave the meeting while complaining about poor access for people with disabilities at the State Department of Education. She also won third place in the 'In-depth Reporting' category for her extensive coverage of education leaders' decision to quietly lower the test score benchmarks that students must meet to be deemed proficient in math and reading. The changes to the cut scores caused student proficiency rates to jump by up to third even as academic gains were stagnant. Her reporting on the topic won top honors in the competitive national Education Writers Association contest earlier this year. 'Really in-depth reporting on how an education department making a move is more about appearances than really improving education,' the judge wrote. 'Well done.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
CNN
25-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
A blandly titled law from 1946 may play a key role in Harvard's lawsuit against the Trump administration
Soon after the Trump administration announced it was cutting billions of dollars in grants to Harvard University following a breakdown in discussions over antisemitism on campus, the Ivy League institution pulled out the biggest weapon in the federal legal arsenal: the First Amendment. 'The Government's attempt to coerce and control Harvard disregards … fundamental First Amendment principles,' Harvard's lawsuit says. But while citing the Bill of Rights' best-known guarantee is an attention-grabber – both for judges and the general public – a more arcane issue is the focus of many of the lawsuit's 51 pages: Harvard's claim Trump's executive branch isn't following federal rules for changing key government policies. In particular, the Administrative Procedure Act 'requires this Court to hold unlawful and set aside any final agency action that is 'arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,'' Harvard says in its lawsuit. It was only hours after its talks with Harvard fell apart that the White House froze $2.2 billion fueling much of the school's research, a breakneck response that mirrors the pace of sweeping changes on issues from immigration and tariff policy to federal staffing by an administration that prefers quick, unilateral action to deliberation and compromise. 'No administration has done anything like this before precisely because there are procedures in place to restrain this kind of extreme thing,' David A. Super, a professor of administrative and constitutional law at Georgetown and Yale, told CNN. Whether the government can impose broad demands on Harvard as a precondition for funding appears to be the latest Trump controversy inevitably headed for the Supreme Court. And while predicting what the high court will do is usually a fool's errand, Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck believes Harvard's case is strong. 'It's not that controversial a proposition that the government's not allowed to say in exchange for this money – which we're going to give you to fund medical research, to fund new scientific methods, etc. – you have to only teach the classes we tell you to teach or you have to only hire the administrators we tell you to hire,' the CNN contributor told the network's Laura Coates on Monday. The Administrative Procedure Act, known as APA, was passed in the wake of World War II, as the government struggled to manage the major expansion of federal agencies under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 'Congress passed the APA to guard against irrational, emotional, unfounded decision-making,' Super said. 'Its purpose is not to push any particular agenda substantively but to make sure that the executive branch is following the law and considering the facts before it acts.' The APA does not require a hearing for every decision made by a government agency, but it does say agencies should not suddenly change procedures without reason. Harvard argues suspending federal medical and scientific research funding as a way to combat antisemitism doesn't make any sense and upends official procedures they had come to expect with no warning. 'For decades, Harvard has relied on the well-established process for federal financial assistance in its budgeting and financial planning, including with respect to staffing, infrastructure, facility and equipment purchases, and long-term investment decisions,' the university said in its suit. While the Trump administration asserts Harvard has allowed antisemitism to flourish in violation of the Civil Rights Act, the university says it is already addressing concerns from Jewish students and faculty by tightening its ban on encampments and other protests that disrupt student activities, making 'doxing' a violation of its anti-harassment and anti-bullying rules and expanding 'inclusion and belonging efforts' to include Jewish students. Further, Harvard says the Civil Rights Act requires the government to first give it a chance to fix any violations before taking federal money away. 'Agencies have to follow their own procedures. If they say they're going to give you a warning, they have to give you a warning,' Super said. 'They can't say, 'Well, we're mad, so we're going to bypass the warning.'' Related stories Harvard has an endowment of over $50 billion. So, why do federal cuts of a few billion matter? What to know about the Trump administration task force targeting Harvard Already facing Trump administration cuts, US colleges risk losses from another revenue source: Foreign students International students are being told by email that their visas are revoked and that they must 'self-deport.' What to know iPhones and GPS owe their existence to US government-funded research. What's at stake with Trump cuts to university funding In its lawsuit, Harvard argues the Trump administration did just that: 'They issued a Freeze Order on research funding first (with no process or opportunity for voluntary compliance) and used that freeze as leverage to negotiate,' Harvard's attorneys wrote. 'Such action is flatly unlawful and contrary to statutory authority.' Indeed, the university learned the billions in federal funding would be frozen at the same time everyone else did – in the final 26 words of a one-page news release from the government's Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, it says. The release was issued on the same day Harvard President Alan Garber announced the school would not agree to the administration's demand letter. The Trump administration's attorneys have not yet provided a response to the allegations in the lawsuit, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday, 'The president has made it quite clear that it's Harvard who has put themselves in the position to lose their own funding by not obeying federal law, and we expect all colleges and universities who are receiving taxpayer funds to abide by federal law.' Harvard's decision to challenge the funding freeze in court seemed to take the administration by surprise. One White House official considered the back-and-forth with Harvard all part of a negotiation, they told CNN, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a CNBC interview, 'We would like to be able to move forward with them and other universities.' But along with the carrot, the White House official continued to brandish a stick at Harvard. 'They want to remain the envy of the world when it comes to research and science and academia, and they can only do that if they work with this administration,' the official told CNN. Harvard is far from the only group affected by the Trump administration's orders to mention the APA when fighting back in court. More than 160 lawsuits have cited alleged violations of it, from complaints over international students facing deportation and fired federal workers to transgender students' access to sports. Lawsuits challenging the finer points of federal law often take years to resolve, but Harvard is asking a judge to speed up the process, saying time is of the essence to avoid harm to their programs. 'While Harvard is diligently seeking to mitigate the effects of these funding cuts, critical research efforts will be scaled back or even terminated,' the university's lawyers wrote Wednesday in a court filing asking for an expedited hearing. With so many lawsuits pending, the question of how much the APA can limit the White House is almost certain to be decided by the Supreme Court. An early ruling from the justices indicated that, despite showing sympathy to APA-based challenges in the past, citing that law is not a guarantee of success. Earlier this month, they blocked a lower court's order to delay the Trump administration's planned termination of $600 million in teacher training grants to states, saying the APA does not necessarily give courts the power to force the government to pay grant money. 'The Government is likely to succeed in showing the District Court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under the APA,' said the unsigned order from the conservative majority. It was a 5-4 ruling, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the court's three liberal justices, a split that makes future decisions in similar cases even more difficult to predict. The issue at the heart of the teacher grants case – with states arguing withholding grant money over diversity, equity and inclusion policy amounted to a broken promise from the government rather than a First Amendment dispute – is different than Harvard' it shows the rocky road anyone challenging the White House's administrative decisions could face, perhaps including Columbia University, which cut its own deal last month over federal funding tied to policy demands over antisemitism. Still, education advocates say, it's worth facing the legal uncertainty to draw a line in the sand. 'Harvard did absolutely the right thing. They came up with a very courageous decision, and more importantly, I think, they made great arguments for why this kind of federal overreach is beyond the pale,' said American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell. And the extreme speed of the actions of taken against Harvard – the unapologetic pace Trump prizes – is likely to be the government's legal undoing, Super said he believes. 'These actions are so sloppy that I don't see any serious chance that they'll survive,' he said. CNN's Katelyn Polantz, Tierney Sneed and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In court battle with Trump, Harvard joins long list of plaintiffs saying administration violated decades-old law
Soon after the Trump administration announced it was cutting billions of dollars in grants to Harvard University following a breakdown in discussions over antisemitism on campus, the Ivy League institution pulled out the biggest weapon in the federal legal arsenal: the First Amendment. 'The Government's attempt to coerce and control Harvard disregards … fundamental First Amendment principles,' Harvard's lawsuit says. But while citing the Bill of Rights' best-known guarantee is an attention-grabber – both for judges and the general public – a more arcane issue is the focus of many of the lawsuit's 51 pages: Harvard's claim Trump's executive branch isn't following federal rules for changing key government policies. In particular, the Administrative Procedure Act 'requires this Court to hold unlawful and set aside any final agency action that is 'arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,'' Harvard says in its lawsuit. It was only hours after its talks with Harvard fell apart that the White House froze $2.2 billion fueling much of the school's research, a breakneck response that mirrors the pace of sweeping changes on issues from immigration and tariff policy to federal staffing by an administration that prefers quick, unilateral action to deliberation and compromise. 'No administration has done anything like this before precisely because there are procedures in place to restrain this kind of extreme thing,' David A. Super, a professor of administrative and constitutional law at Georgetown and Yale, told CNN. Whether the government can impose broad demands on Harvard as a precondition for funding appears to be the latest Trump controversy inevitably headed for the Supreme Court. And while predicting what the high court will do is usually a fool's errand, Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck believes Harvard's case is strong. 'It's not that controversial a proposition that the government's not allowed to say in exchange for this money – which we're going to give you to fund medical research, to fund new scientific methods, etc. – you have to only teach the classes we tell you to teach or you have to only hire the administrators we tell you to hire,' the CNN contributor told the network's Laura Coates on Monday. The Administrative Procedure Act, known as APA, was passed in the wake of World War II, as the government struggled to manage the major expansion of federal agencies under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 'Congress passed the APA to guard against irrational, emotional, unfounded decision-making,' Super said. 'Its purpose is not to push any particular agenda substantively but to make sure that the executive branch is following the law and considering the facts before it acts.' The APA does not require a hearing for every decision made by a government agency, but it does say agencies should not suddenly change procedures without reason. Harvard argues suspending federal medical and scientific research funding as a way to combat antisemitism doesn't make any sense and upends official procedures they had come to expect with no warning. 'For decades, Harvard has relied on the well-established process for federal financial assistance in its budgeting and financial planning, including with respect to staffing, infrastructure, facility and equipment purchases, and long-term investment decisions,' the university said in its suit. While the Trump administration asserts Harvard has allowed antisemitism to flourish in violation of the Civil Rights Act, the university says it is already addressing concerns from Jewish students and faculty by tightening its ban on encampments and other protests that disrupt student activities, making 'doxing' a violation of its anti-harassment and anti-bullying rules and expanding 'inclusion and belonging efforts' to include Jewish students. Further, Harvard says the Civil Rights Act requires the government to first give it a chance to fix any violations before taking federal money away. 'Agencies have to follow their own procedures. If they say they're going to give you a warning, they have to give you a warning,' Super said. 'They can't say, 'Well, we're mad, so we're going to bypass the warning.'' In its lawsuit, Harvard argues the Trump administration did just that: 'They issued a Freeze Order on research funding first (with no process or opportunity for voluntary compliance) and used that freeze as leverage to negotiate,' Harvard's attorneys wrote. 'Such action is flatly unlawful and contrary to statutory authority.' Indeed, the university learned the billions in federal funding would be frozen at the same time everyone else did – in the final 26 words of a one-page news release from the government's Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, it says. The release was issued on the same day Harvard President Alan Garber announced the school would not agree to the administration's demand letter. The Trump administration's attorneys have not yet provided a response to the allegations in the lawsuit, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday, 'The president has made it quite clear that it's Harvard who has put themselves in the position to lose their own funding by not obeying federal law, and we expect all colleges and universities who are receiving taxpayer funds to abide by federal law.' Harvard's decision to challenge the funding freeze in court seemed to take the administration by surprise. One White House official considered the back-and-forth with Harvard all part of a negotiation, they told CNN, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a CNBC interview, 'We would like to be able to move forward with them and other universities.' But along with the carrot, the White House official continued to brandish a stick at Harvard. 'They want to remain the envy of the world when it comes to research and science and academia, and they can only do that if they work with this administration,' the official told CNN. Harvard is far from the only group affected by the Trump administration's orders to mention the APA when fighting back in court. More than 160 lawsuits have cited alleged violations of it, from complaints over international students facing deportation and fired federal workers to transgender students' access to sports. Lawsuits challenging the finer points of federal law often take years to resolve, but Harvard is asking a judge to speed up the process, saying time is of the essence to avoid harm to their programs. 'While Harvard is diligently seeking to mitigate the effects of these funding cuts, critical research efforts will be scaled back or even terminated,' the university's lawyers wrote Wednesday in a court filing asking for an expedited hearing. With so many lawsuits pending, the question of how much the APA can limit the White House is almost certain to be decided by the Supreme Court. An early ruling from the justices indicated that, despite showing sympathy to APA-based challenges in the past, citing that law is not a guarantee of success. Earlier this month, they blocked a lower court's order to delay the Trump administration's planned termination of $600 million in teacher training grants to states, saying the APA does not necessarily give courts the power to force the government to pay grant money. 'The Government is likely to succeed in showing the District Court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under the APA,' said the unsigned order from the conservative majority. It was a 5-4 ruling, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the court's three liberal justices, a split that makes future decisions in similar cases even more difficult to predict. The issue at the heart of the teacher grants case – with states arguing withholding grant money over diversity, equity and inclusion policy amounted to a broken promise from the government rather than a First Amendment dispute – is different than Harvard' it shows the rocky road anyone challenging the White House's administrative decisions could face, perhaps including Columbia University, which cut its own deal last month over federal funding tied to policy demands over antisemitism. Still, education advocates say, it's worth facing the legal uncertainty to draw a line in the sand. 'Harvard did absolutely the right thing. They came up with a very courageous decision, and more importantly, I think, they made great arguments for why this kind of federal overreach is beyond the pale,' said American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell. And the extreme speed of the actions of taken against Harvard – the unapologetic pace Trump prizes – is likely to be the government's legal undoing, Super said he believes. 'These actions are so sloppy that I don't see any serious chance that they'll survive,' he said. CNN's Katelyn Polantz, Tierney Sneed and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
CNN
25-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
In court battle with Trump, Harvard joins long list of plaintiffs saying administration violated decades-old law
Soon after the Trump administration announced it was cutting billions of dollars in grants to Harvard University following a breakdown in discussions over antisemitism on campus, the Ivy League institution pulled out the biggest weapon in the federal legal arsenal: the First Amendment. 'The Government's attempt to coerce and control Harvard disregards … fundamental First Amendment principles,' Harvard's lawsuit says. But while citing the Bill of Rights' best-known guarantee is an attention-grabber – both for judges and the general public – a more arcane issue is the focus of many of the lawsuit's 51 pages: Harvard's claim Trump's executive branch isn't following federal rules for changing key government policies. In particular, the Administrative Procedure Act 'requires this Court to hold unlawful and set aside any final agency action that is 'arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,'' Harvard says in its lawsuit. It was only hours after its talks with Harvard fell apart that the White House froze $2.2 billion fueling much of the school's research, a breakneck response that mirrors the pace of sweeping changes on issues from immigration and tariff policy to federal staffing by an administration that prefers quick, unilateral action to deliberation and compromise. 'No administration has done anything like this before precisely because there are procedures in place to restrain this kind of extreme thing,' David A. Super, a professor of administrative and constitutional law at Georgetown and Yale, told CNN. Whether the government can impose broad demands on Harvard as a precondition for funding appears to be the latest Trump controversy inevitably headed for the Supreme Court. And while predicting what the high court will do is usually a fool's errand, Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck believes Harvard's case is strong. 'It's not that controversial a proposition that the government's not allowed to say in exchange for this money – which we're going to give you to fund medical research, to fund new scientific methods, etc. – you have to only teach the classes we tell you to teach or you have to only hire the administrators we tell you to hire,' the CNN contributor told the network's Laura Coates on Monday. The Administrative Procedure Act, known as APA, was passed in the wake of World War II, as the government struggled to manage the major expansion of federal agencies under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 'Congress passed the APA to guard against irrational, emotional, unfounded decision-making,' Super said. 'Its purpose is not to push any particular agenda substantively but to make sure that the executive branch is following the law and considering the facts before it acts.' The APA does not require a hearing for every decision made by a government agency, but it does say agencies should not suddenly change procedures without reason. Harvard argues suspending federal medical and scientific research funding as a way to combat antisemitism doesn't make any sense and upends official procedures they had come to expect with no warning. 'For decades, Harvard has relied on the well-established process for federal financial assistance in its budgeting and financial planning, including with respect to staffing, infrastructure, facility and equipment purchases, and long-term investment decisions,' the university said in its suit. While the Trump administration asserts Harvard has allowed antisemitism to flourish in violation of the Civil Rights Act, the university says it is already addressing concerns from Jewish students and faculty by tightening its ban on encampments and other protests that disrupt student activities, making 'doxing' a violation of its anti-harassment and anti-bullying rules and expanding 'inclusion and belonging efforts' to include Jewish students. Further, Harvard says the Civil Rights Act requires the government to first give it a chance to fix any violations before taking federal money away. 'Agencies have to follow their own procedures. If they say they're going to give you a warning, they have to give you a warning,' Super said. 'They can't say, 'Well, we're mad, so we're going to bypass the warning.'' Related stories Harvard has an endowment of over $50 billion. So, why do federal cuts of a few billion matter? What to know about the Trump administration task force targeting Harvard Already facing Trump administration cuts, US colleges risk losses from another revenue source: Foreign students International students are being told by email that their visas are revoked and that they must 'self-deport.' What to know iPhones and GPS owe their existence to US government-funded research. What's at stake with Trump cuts to university funding In its lawsuit, Harvard argues the Trump administration did just that: 'They issued a Freeze Order on research funding first (with no process or opportunity for voluntary compliance) and used that freeze as leverage to negotiate,' Harvard's attorneys wrote. 'Such action is flatly unlawful and contrary to statutory authority.' Indeed, the university learned the billions in federal funding would be frozen at the same time everyone else did – in the final 26 words of a one-page news release from the government's Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, it says. The release was issued on the same day Harvard President Alan Garber announced the school would not agree to the administration's demand letter. The Trump administration's attorneys have not yet provided a response to the allegations in the lawsuit, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday, 'The president has made it quite clear that it's Harvard who has put themselves in the position to lose their own funding by not obeying federal law, and we expect all colleges and universities who are receiving taxpayer funds to abide by federal law.' Harvard's decision to challenge the funding freeze in court seemed to take the administration by surprise. One White House official considered the back-and-forth with Harvard all part of a negotiation, they told CNN, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a CNBC interview, 'We would like to be able to move forward with them and other universities.' But along with the carrot, the White House official continued to brandish a stick at Harvard. 'They want to remain the envy of the world when it comes to research and science and academia, and they can only do that if they work with this administration,' the official told CNN. Harvard is far from the only group affected by the Trump administration's orders to mention the APA when fighting back in court. More than 160 lawsuits have cited alleged violations of it, from complaints over international students facing deportation and fired federal workers to transgender students' access to sports. Lawsuits challenging the finer points of federal law often take years to resolve, but Harvard is asking a judge to speed up the process, saying time is of the essence to avoid harm to their programs. 'While Harvard is diligently seeking to mitigate the effects of these funding cuts, critical research efforts will be scaled back or even terminated,' the university's lawyers wrote Wednesday in a court filing asking for an expedited hearing. With so many lawsuits pending, the question of how much the APA can limit the White House is almost certain to be decided by the Supreme Court. An early ruling from the justices indicated that, despite showing sympathy to APA-based challenges in the past, citing that law is not a guarantee of success. Earlier this month, they blocked a lower court's order to delay the Trump administration's planned termination of $600 million in teacher training grants to states, saying the APA does not necessarily give courts the power to force the government to pay grant money. 'The Government is likely to succeed in showing the District Court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under the APA,' said the unsigned order from the conservative majority. It was a 5-4 ruling, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the court's three liberal justices, a split that makes future decisions in similar cases even more difficult to predict. The issue at the heart of the teacher grants case – with states arguing withholding grant money over diversity, equity and inclusion policy amounted to a broken promise from the government rather than a First Amendment dispute – is different than Harvard' it shows the rocky road anyone challenging the White House's administrative decisions could face, perhaps including Columbia University, which cut its own deal last month over federal funding tied to policy demands over antisemitism. Still, education advocates say, it's worth facing the legal uncertainty to draw a line in the sand. 'Harvard did absolutely the right thing. They came up with a very courageous decision, and more importantly, I think, they made great arguments for why this kind of federal overreach is beyond the pale,' said American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell. And the extreme speed of the actions of taken against Harvard – the unapologetic pace Trump prizes – is likely to be the government's legal undoing, Super said he believes. 'These actions are so sloppy that I don't see any serious chance that they'll survive,' he said. CNN's Katelyn Polantz, Tierney Sneed and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Federal lawsuit by UFW, ACLU targets agencies involved in January immigration actions
Five local residents joined the United Farm Workers union Wednesday in suing two federal agencies they say unlawfully targeted, detained and coerced them during last month's immigration sweeps in Kern County. Filed in the Eastern District of California by the ACLU and a San Francisco law firm, the federal lawsuit accuses the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection of violating the Bill of Rights' protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and guarantee of due process. The 71-page filing says victims were stopped regardless of reasonable suspicion, arrested irrespective of their flight risk and expelled without explanation. It alleges examples of longtime local residents, including a permanent resident and a U.S. citizen, who became stranded in Mexico after they were misled into signing agreements to leave the United States voluntarily. Coming ahead of additional sweeps promised by the Trump administration, the lawsuit could provide a legal test of recent federal immigration enforcement. A 20-year resident of Kern County, Maria Hernandez Espinoza, said in a news release announcing the suit that she wasn't allowed to read papers agents required her to sign, nor was she allowed to appear before an immigration judge. Now she is in Mexico unsure when she will see her loved ones. "They stopped us because we look Latino or like farmworkers, because of the color of our skin. It was unfair," she said in the release. Both federal agencies whose top officials have been listed as plaintiffs could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon. The CBP responded with an automatic email saying the matter would be addressed on Thursday. Following the local immigration sweeps the week of Jan. 6, CBP said the effort caught two child rapists in addition to turning up processed marijuana and leading to the detention of dozens of individuals who were in the country without proper authorization. Last month's sweeps, dubbed by CBP as "Operation Return to Sender," brought considerable disruption to the county's immigrant neighborhoods. Significant portions of local work crews in agriculture and construction stayed off the job for days; most returned the following week. People detained in the sweeps appear to have been selected based on their appearance, the suit says, and they were arrested despite the legal requirement that they first be found to be in violation of immigration law and a significant flight risk, which the plaintiffs allege was not true with the five plaintiffs. Two of the plaintiffs were at a Home Depot near a group of day laborers when they were arrested after they did not answer agents' questions, the suit says. One plaintiff is a U.S. citizen whose tires were slashed by agents after he refused to surrender his truck keys, the suit says. His passenger that day is another of the plaintiffs, and the fifth is a maintenance and construction worker whose exit from the parking lot of a local store was allegedly blocked by a CBP patrol vehicle. All were taken to a border station three hours away in El Centro, where the suit says they were detained in cold cells without sleeping quarters or showers and without access to a phone to call a lawyer or their family. It says they weren't given information they could read about the department agreements they ultimately signed. In at least one case, a plaintiff was allegedly told, misleadingly, that his cooperation would fix his immigration status. The suit says the UFW was included as a plaintiff because some of its members were subjected to the unlawful practices listed. 'Farm workers, and all our neighbors in Kern County, should have the right to move, work, and live free from fear,' UFW President Teresa Romero said in Wednesday's release. 'Discriminatory raids by rogue federal agencies undermine the right of Latino citizens to feel at home in their own country. Such raids also intimidate farm workers into tolerating labor exploitation and abuse in the fields, pushing wages and working conditions down for all workers.' Four defendants were listed: Secretary Kristi Noem of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the CBP; CBP Acting Commissioner Pete R. Flores; the agency's Chief Michael W. Banks; and Gregory K. Bovino, chief patrol agent for CBP's El Centro Sector. The complaint says CBP has a history of "subjecting people it arrests to deceptive, coercive and threatening tactics to pressure them to accept voluntary departure," and that in that context, courts have intervened repeatedly "to stop unlawful Border Patrol practices." Representing the plaintiffs were the ACLU Foundations of Northern California, Southern California and San Diego & Imperial Counties, and by the law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP.
