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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Phoenix Summit Tackles Immigration Enforcement Abuses

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Friday, March 27, 2009   

Phoenix, AZ – Organizers expect more than 100 participants at a national summit on immigration enforcement methods starting this morning in Phoenix. Chairman Daniel Ortega says the conference will focus on alleged abuses such as racial profiling under what are called 287-G agreements, which authorize local and state police to make immigration arrests.

"There are many U.S. citizens and legal residents who are subject to scrutiny that they wouldn’t otherwise be subject to, and to arrests that they wouldn’t be subject to, were it not for the 287-G agreement."

Ortega says the "national poster child" for 287-G abuses is Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The U.S. Justice Department announced two weeks ago it was investigating the sheriff for alleged racial profiling, something Arpaio has consistently denied. A congressional committee also plans a hearing. Arpaio says the actions are politically motivated.

Despite the sheriff’s denials, Ortega says the primary offense for those picked up in Arpaio’s neighborhood crime sweeps appears to be "driving while brown."

"He’s stopping for things that he wouldn’t stop white folks for. White people would not be subject to stop because they had a broken tail light or they had a cracked windshield."

There is even more potential for civil rights abuses in workplace raids, adds Ortega.

"When he apprehends a hundred people at a work site, the majority that he apprehends, that he puts under arrest, are legal citizens and U.S. residents who are detained for hours on end because they're brown."

Sheriff Arpaio says he’s only enforcing the laws as written and will not stop the crime sweeps and workplace raids aimed at undocumented immigrants. The Phoenix summit will call for the federal government to end the 287-G agreements if civil rights abuses are confirmed.






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