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On April 15, 2010, in Louisiana, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents detained over forty members of the Evangelical Latino congregation, “El Buen Pastor.” The families were returning home to Raleigh, North Carolina. The church members were traveling on Interstate-10 in Louisiana, returning from an annual jubilee in Texas, called the “Santa Cena” or “Holy Week.” The vans were not cited with any traffic violations; rather the stop and the arrests were motivated by CBP’s suspicion — based on Latino appearance — that the church members may be undocumented. CBP claims that they can use race as a factor to make stops and arrests within a 100-mile radius of the border. CBP also claims that the southern shoreline is border territory. Primarily families — men, women and children members of El Buen Pastor — were traveling in the vans. When CBP stopped them, the agents aggressively questioned the travelers. CBP agents handcuffed many of the men and took them away in patrol vehicles. Some of the churchwomen recounted the impacts they suffered at the hands of the CBP agents: The officials were banging on the door. My sister in law told the officials to lower their voices. . . All of us were scared. We said, “we are coming from a church event.” There were babies in the car and they were all crying. However, the officials did not change their tone. My niece is special needs and she started to moan and throw her arms around in the air. Her father was worried that she was going to accidentally detach herself from the feeding machine . . . As my children watched the officers handcuff my husband they started to cry . . . As we were driven to the CBP office by the officers, one of my aunts was crying and upset trying to pray and sing hymns in a quiet voice. Everyone else was crying and the official just laughed, asking if God would save us from this. CBP agents coerced the parents into signing documents they did not understand, despite trying to uphold their rights to remain silent and to consult with an attorney. The CBP agents threatened that if they did not sign, the men and women would be sent to separate detention facilities and the children would become wards of the state. Everyone else was crying and the official just laughed, asking if God would save us from this. For hours, the church members were crammed into the office as each family was processed. One churchwoman explained, “We waited in the office but there wasn’t really anywhere to sit. I remember my older son was tossing and turning because he wanted to sleep but there was nowhere to lie down. The children were crying.” CBP Official: “Like winning the lottery” The church members felt their rights were violated by the way officials treated them; CBP officials mocked them for wearing head coverings. Despite explaining that their dress is a way to demonstrate respect for God, the officials humiliated them, joking that the real reason they wear the veils is to disguise their messy hair. The officers spoke of the church members as objects. “At the time of shift change a new official came in and I heard him say to the others, ‘Good job, congratulations.’ He told them they had caught a bunch and because there were so many of us it was like winning the lottery.” The CBP arrest and treatment traumatized the families, especially the children. A Call for Support Now, church members are fighting to stop their deportation proceedings and uphold their human rights. With the support of Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ), the families are fighting for suppression of removal in Immigration Court because the government did not legally obtain the information regarding the documentation status of the church members. SCSJ represents the members in a suit against CBP for withholding public records about the arrest. SCSJ will also represent them in a suit based on emotional abuse CBP agents inflicted on congregation members and other violations of their constitutional rights.Buen Pastor is organizing with other faith communities and allies, in particular, Latino congregations that have suffered abuse by Immigration and other law enforcement authorities. On February 18, members of El Buen Pastor led a vigil attended by over seventy people. They called on their faith to give them strength and courage to continue fighting for their human dignity. Their next Immigration Court date is June 23rd, 2011 in Charlotte, NC. The congregation is asking for other Latino and allied churches to write letters denouncing the CBP abuses inflicted against them. If your congregation would like to write a letter or you would like to become involved contact staff organizer, Rebecca Fontaine at Rebecca@southerncoalition.org. To follow the case, sign up on SCSJ’s Twitter or Facebook account. Click here to read press articles about the arrest. Rebecca Fontaine works at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice as an immigrants' rights organizing and as a bilingual immigration paralegal. Labels: border, Border Patrol, El Buen Pastor, faith, Holy Week, immigration, Louisiana, NNIRR, racial profiling, SCSJ, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, undocumented

Members of Raleigh’s Buen Pastor Church are fighting and praying to stop the deportation of twenty-six of its congregants. The church group was travelling together back to North Carolina after attending a religious retreat when Customs & Border Protection (CBP) pulled over three church vans in Louisiana. Some forty-five congregants were transported to the CBP processing office – at least half of them young U.S. citizen children. While there, the group was subjected to religious taunts and the congregants’ repeated requests to call a lawyer were denied. The children spent six to eight hours on the floor, without food or drink. At the end of the process, adults were told that if they refused to sign the papers, they would be deported, and the United States would “keep” the children, putting them into orphanages. SCSJ has filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to seek CBP records about the stop and arrest. In immigration court, SCSJ will file a Motion to Suppress Evidence & Terminate Proceedings based on CBP’s constitutional, statutory, and regulatory violations. Read more about the case in this news article.


Take Action! As part of the evidence for SCSJ's suppression of removal case -- which demands that the government drop the original case -- SCSJ is calling on churches with strong a Latino and immigrant base to express their outrage about the Buen Pastor stop. Attached below is a letter to download which you can sign and return to SCSJ. The letters will then be submitted alongside a legal brief to show the impact of racial profiling in immigrant and Latino communities. Download the letter return it to Rebecca Fontaine, SCSJ Immigrant Rights Organizer, via fax or email. Fax: 919-323-3942 Email: rebecca@southerncoalition.org

Editor's note: The names of the undocumented immigrants have been withheld for their safety. It is the Indy's policy to disclose the names of undocumented immigrants only when they have been formally charged with a crime, have pleaded guilty or have been convicted. Updated on March 7: Elizabeth Simpson, attorney for the congregants, told the Indy that while the individuals are charged with being undocumented, the charges have not yet been sustained in immigration court. It was Easter weekend, April 2010. More than 50 Latino men, women, boys and girls, traveling in a caravan of three church vans and six cars, wound their way through Louisiana along Interstate 10, just after midnight. For the Raleigh-based Buen Pastor Church congregation, this route was not unfamiliar. Church members—most of them undocumented immigrants—were returning home after a weeklong jubilation in Houston, Texas, for Santa Cena—the "holy meal" celebrating the Last Supper. Outside Lake Charles, the flashing lights of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) cars appeared in the vans' rear-view mirrors. Agents pulled the vans over, although, congregation members say, they were driving under the required speed limit. What happened next continues to haunt the congregation: Agents interrogated them from midnight until dawn, allegedly calling them names and humiliating them. Earlier this week, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which is representing Buen Pastor, and the congregation sued the U.S. government in federal court. The suit was filed with the Eastern District of North Carolina, which includes Raleigh. They are requesting the release of agency records from CBP, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in hopes of reviewing documents that detail the events of that night. (The groups originally filed a Freedom of Information Act request, but received no response.) Press officers with CBP and CIS did not return repeated calls and e-mails from the Indy seeking comment. Trailing the vans, Buen Pastor's minister was driving a car with his wife and five children asleep in the back. The minister says he saw agents pull over the church vans, which carried 24 adults and 18 children. He continued driving and watched in his rearview mirror as the men he calls brothers were handcuffed and patted down. He acknowledges that he had only one thought, and that was to protect his family. "The agents didn't stop our cars," he told the Indy through a translator. "I know God was watching over us that night, because He allowed us to get by unnoticed." The drivers of the six cars, including the pastor, traveled for 20 miles before stopping at a gas station. Inside, they clung to one another, sobbing, until they realized they were drawing attention to themselves. They got back in their cars and left Louisiana. For their fellow church members who had been detained, the ordeal continued. According to congregants' legal testimonies gathered by the coalition, agents banged against the side of the vans and shouted at the passengers. Some of the agents reportedly handcuffed the men and placed them in squad cars. Other agents slid into the drivers' seats of the church vans—while the children sobbed and the women tried to calm them—and drove them to the CBP Port of Entry headquarters in Lake Charles. Once at CBP headquarters, men, still handcuffed, were placed in jail cells, while the women and children huddled against the office walls. When some began praying and softly singing hymns, an agent, according to the testimony, laughed and told them, "Let's see if your God will save you from this." Similar to some Mennonites and the Amish, the congregation's women do not wear pants and always wear colorful head coverings that are netted and sometimes beaded. Two agents reportedly told the women they "looked stupid," and another asked, "Do you wear those scarves so you don't have to brush your hair?" In the office, the agents interviewed each family individually, and according to the congregants, denied their repeated requests to call a lawyer. The agents completed paperwork and told the parishioners to sign their names on forms written in English. When the men and women hesitated—not knowing what they were signing—the agents reportedly told them, in a mix of Spanish and English, that if they did not sign the forms, they would be sent to separate jails, and the children would be sent to orphanages and become property of the United States. Under duress, the adults signed the papers, and around 6 a.m., were allowed to leave—but only after an agent reportedly asked the group to stand together so he could take a photo with his personal camera to show his wife. According to the congregants' testimony, he told them that they were his office's "biggest catch yet." The church vans pulled out of Lake Charles, with six empty seats. A half-dozen single men were detained by the CBP and deported back to Mexico within weeks. "I feel responsible," said Buen Pastor's minister, as he held his sleeping toddler in one arm and a large Bible in a tan tooled-leather cover in the other. "I am their leader and I took them to the celebration. It weighs on me." He came to North Carolina 11 years ago, and has served his Raleigh congregation of about 80 people for the past decade. A quiet man, he said he found his calling as a New Evangelical minister in 1994, while living in Mexico. The congregation was aware that there could be risks in taking the trip, but, the minister said, they were not afraid because most of them had traveled to Santa Cena many times before. The coalition took the church's case for free last October. If the church's requests are not answered, the coalition and the church plan to sue the federal government, says the coalition staff attorney, Elizabeth Simpson. Simpson represents 22 of the church members in removal proceedings by the Immigration Court in Charlotte as a result of their arrests. The men and women could be deported by April. The coalition is arguing that the CBP stop was based on racial profiling and violated the Fourth Amendment. The men and women facing removal have no criminal record, said Simpson. "The agents' behavior during the arrest was pretty appalling," she added. "Taunting the group about whether "their God would save them. They were also joking about what a 'big commission' they would earn for catching so many 'illegals' at once." Since that night, the minister says members of Buen Pastor have felt afraid. "We see police officers not as someone that could help us but harm us," he said. "Before this fear we would go out into the streets, to the park or lake, but now when we leave our house we don't know if we will come back." The 18 children who were sleeping in the church vans that night and awakened to seeing their fathers handcuffed and driven away, have suffered most. (The children were released.) "Some of these children have a father or mother awaiting deportation," said the minister. "Others cry when their dad goes to work, or rush home from school worried he will not be there."

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