A customs officer arrested them for speaking in Spanish and they asked him

The United States Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on February 14 on behalf of two American women detained last year in a small town in the United States. Montana by a customs officer who said that he had asked them for their identity card because he had heard them speak in Spanish.

The customs officer, identified in the lawsuit as being Paul A. O. Neal, arrested the women, Ana Suda and Martha Hernandez, in a convenience store in Havre, Montana, on the night of May 16, 2018. The lawsuit alleges that O Neal made a comment on Hernandez's accent, whom he described as "very strong," then asked where they were born. Hernandez was born in California and Suda, Texas, mentioned the ACLU.

When women have expressed their impact on the issue of the agent, He replied that he was speaking "very seriously" and asked them to see their identity papers, according to the request.

After showing the agent the validity of his Montana driver's license, O Neal stopped for a moment on the parking lot of the store, mentions the trial. Then the women started recording the encounter with their phones and, in the video, they asked the officer why he had arrested them.

"Madam, the reason I asked for your identity is because I came here and I have heard them speak in Spanish, which we usually do not hear from these sides"said the agent, looking at the camera.

Then one of the women asked him if he had arrested them because of their "racial profile".

"No, it has nothing to do with it," he replied, as shown in the video. "It's the fact that they spoke Spanish in a shop in a state where English was mainly spoken, are you okay?"

The ACLU says that it is not correct. In the lawsuit in the Montana District Court in the United States, it says that the Customs and Border Protection violated the fourth amendment to the Constitution because the agency had no probable cause to stop women.

The ACLU also claims that the agency Violated women's constitutional right to equal protection The officer stated that he was questioning them because he had heard them speak in Spanish, which, according to the ACLU, would have been used as a substitute for their race.

A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection Bureau declined to provide information about the meeting or to comment on the lawsuit, which also refers to O. Neal, the acting commissioner of the Customs and Excise Bureau. Border Protection, Kevin K McAleenan and twenty-five other anonymous defendants named "Juan Pérez" who, according to the ACLU, were involved in the episode.

"In terms of agency policy, the US Customs and Border Protection does not comment on the pending litigation," said Jason Givens, spokesman for the agency, in an email. "However, the absence of comments should not be construed as a concordance or stipulation with any of the allegations."

Efforts to locate O. Neal on Thursday night did not bear fruit immediately.

In a statement The ACLU noted that it was unconstitutional for security or immigration officers to arrest people because of their language, their accent or their race. Cody Wofsy, an advocate for the organization's "Immigrant Rights Project", said that he considered the case "as part of a more widespread pattern of abusive behavior on the part of An uncontrollable organism ".

"It's an opportunity for the courts to get involved and prove that there are constitutional limits to what CBP can do," he said. "From what we have seen in the last two years of the Trump administration, it is clear that it is not new. agency has been urged to implement some of its worst impulses. "

The case highlights the concern over the extensive power of the Customs and Border Protection Bureau, whose agents have the power to detain and interrogate people at a distance. 160 kilometers from an international border, vast nearly two-thirds of the population of the United States.

Le Havre, an isolated farming town of approximately 9,000 people, is home to a CBP regional office of 183 officers with jurisdiction over more than 720 kilometers from the Canadian border. The city is about 56 kilometers from the border.

In 2006, the US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit determined that border agents illegally arrested five Latin Americans in Le Havre in 2004 and stated that "the apparently Latin American ethnicity, although relevant factor in an investigation conducted by reasonable suspicion, can not in itself justify arrest for research purposes in a border area. "

The episode of May 16 was not the first experience of Suda and Hernandez with border agents.

According to the lawsuit, last February, women were dancing in a bar when a plainclothes border police officer took a photo with their phone and sent it to other agents with the next comment: "There are two Mexicans in the bar".

One of the agents who received the text message replied that the women were friends with his wife, said the ACLU.

In May 2018, Hernandez and Suda were held in the parking lot for about forty minutes, according to the ACLU. According to the complaint, several other officers arrived at the scene, including the supervisor of O. Neal.

Suda asked the supervisor, who was not identified by name in the lawsuit, that he had been arrested when he spoke in French..

"No," he replied, according to the request. "We do not do that"

In a statement, Suda said that the experiment had been humiliating and this had brought other inhabitants of Le Havre to avoid her and Hernandez. Suda mentioned that her daughter was afraid to speak Spanish and now responds in English when her mother spoke to her in Spanish "because she's scared"..

"It changed our lives, I think forever," said Suda in a statement.