Wayne County Star
Farm Bureau to Ask for Border Patrol Inquiry
2009-08-26,Louise Hoffman Broach | Wayuga Editor
Photo by Louise Hoffman Broach | Wayuga Editor
NORTH ROSE – Border patrol officers can’t break the law to enforce it, the Wayne County Farm Bureau is asserting.
Farm Bureau is in the process of gathering information for a formal complaint to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Buffalo, asking for an investigation into the circumstances of the stop of four migrant farm workers on Route 414 in front of Barbara Jean’s Furniture Store Aug. 17.
Also, U.S. Sen. Kristen Gillibrand was made aware of the incident last week and indicated she will write a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napalitano regarding border patrol activity in Wayne County.
Farm Bureau’s complaint alleges that the Border Patrol officers racially profiled the men, pulling them over solely on the basis they were Mexican and had out-of-state license plates. It also alleges the officers decided they were undocumented at the scene, before attempting to authenticate their paperwork or rely on a fingerprint check, which was done later when the men were taken to a federal holding center in Batavia.
Brian Doyle, who employed them and was called to the scene by a friend of the men, said the officer in charge, E Rodriguez, called him a “federal criminal” and referred to the men as “illegal immigrants.”
The men were later determined to be undocumented; although border patrol officers acknowledged that Doyle, of Wolcott, could not have known because their paperwork checked out, but did not match their fingerprints. Two of the men had worked for Doyle for at least four years and Doyle had never gotten a “no-match” on their social security numbers, so he assumed they were in the U.S. legally.
Doyle and County Farm Bureau President Phil Wagner said the issue goes beyond the legal status of the four men to the underlying problem of intense racial profiling of Mexican farm workers in Wayne County, regardless of their legal status.
“It’s guilty until proven innocent,” Wagner said. “That is not the way justice works in this country.”
Border patrol denies racial profiling, but has acknowledged officers have engaged in stops and detentions of people who they later have determined to be in the U.S. legally. They say they offer to return those people to the area where they were taken into custody, but several growers dispute that, noting they have had to go to Batavia to retrieve their workers.
Farm Bureau will also inform the U.S. Attorney’s Office that statements the Border Patrol made to the media after the fact were a clear attempt to cover up a racially motivated stop and discredit the farmers.
Border Patrol spokesman A.J. Price insisted to reporters from the Syracuse Post Standard, the Finger Lakes Times and several area television stations that that stop was not a stop at all. Price said that the men’s car was disabled at Route 414 and Route 104, was a hazard in the intersection and that officers offered assistance. Price told the media that the men volunteered to Border Patrol officers they were undocumented.
Photos that appeared with last week’s story on the stop in the Wayuga Community Newspapers show Barbara Jean’s Furniture Store in the background during the incident. The store is more than four miles to the south of the Route 104 and 414 intersection. State police were also at the scene at the furniture store. The car was not disabled and was driven away by a farmer after the men were detained.
Doyle said the men were returning from Wal-Mart and would not have had any reason to even be near Route 414 and Route 104.
Additionally, Price told reporters that border patrol officers were held to a high standard and that no complaints had been lodged against them in Wayne County.
In July, after the Wayne County Star found three racist and other inappropriate posts on its website that showed Internet protocol addresses belonging to the Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol servers, the Star complained to Wayne County District Attorney Richard Healy. Healy brought the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Buffalo and an investigation was launched in which the newspaper cooperated. The results of the investigation, or whether it is completed, have not been released.
Because some of the comments on the website threatened farmers, Farm Bureau also complained to Healy.
Price himself was quoted in a New York Times story regarding the investigation.