Report: Immigration Raids Violated Rights

Latinos made up a disproportionate number of the people arrested who were not the stated targets of the raids, and many of their arrest reports gave no basis for why they were initially seized, said the report, which was based on data from raids in New York and New Jersey.

The Immigration Justice Clinic at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law analyzed home raid arrest records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Long Island and throughout New Jersey. The clinic, founded last year, represents indigent immigrants facing deportation.

Its report, released Wednesday, said that since ICE agents use administrative warrants - instead of judicial warrants, which give law enforcement unfettered access - they must have a resident's consent to enter a home or else violate the constitutional right to protection against unreasonable searches.

On Long Island, 86 percent of arrest records from 100 raids between January 2006 and April 2008 showed no record of consent being given, the report found. In northern and central New Jersey, no record of consent being given was found for 24 percent of about 600 arrests in 2006 and 2007, it found.

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