Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Report: Racial Profiling and Immigration Enforcement in Bedford County, Tennessee

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition has prepared a report entitled "The Forgotten Constitution," which examines the interconnection of racial profiling and immigration enforcement in Bedford County, Tennessee. 

The report is broken down into four parts.  

  • Part 1 describes initial encounters that immigrants have with law enforcement officials;  
  • Part 2 examines the booking and detention procedures at the Bedford County Jail;
  • Part 3 reports problems that immigrants have with the Bedford County court system;
  • Part 4 looks at issues that immigrants deal with once they are taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and
  • Part 5 details what is being done by activists to attempt to fix the problem.

In sum, the report explains that: “To be an immigrant or refugee in Bedford County is to be treated with suspicion or outright hostility by one’s own government, whose offices still exhibit vestiges of the overt racial apartheid of years past.”

Click here to read the full report.

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