A federal judge ruled Monday that a suburban New York village discriminated against Hispanic day laborers when it closed a hiring site and stepped up police patrols on the streets where they looked for work.

The ruling against the Village of Mamaroneck could influence the treatment of day laborers elsewhere around the United States, where they have become an increasingly visible part of the immigration debate as they solicit construction and landscaping jobs.

The victory is at least the second this year for day laborers in federal court. In May, a federal judge prohibited the city of Redondo Beach, California, from arresting day laborers for violating a local ordinance against soliciting work in public.

Cesar Perales, president of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented the day laborers, said the decision "means a great deal.............

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/11/20/ap3192162.html

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- A federal judge ruled Monday that the Village of Mamaroneck discriminated against Hispanic day laborers when it closed a hiring site and stepped up police patrols on the streets where they looked for work.

"Since August 2004, and continuing into this past summer, the defendants have engaged in a campaign designed to drive out the Latino day laborers who gather on the streets of Mamaroneck to seek work," Judge Colleen McMahon wrote. "The fact that the day laborers were Latinos, and not whites, was, at least in part, a motivating factor in defendants' actions."

While finding the village liable, McMahon did not specify a remedy, giving the two sides 10 days to make suggestions. And in a footnote at the end of the decision, she suggested there waas still time to find a settlement.

       
The ruling could influence the treatment of day laborers elsewhere around the country, where they have become an increasingly visible symbol of the immigration issue as they solicit construction and landscaping jobs.

The victory is at least the second this year for day laborers in federal court. In May, a federal judge prohibited the city of Redondo Beach, Calif., from arresting day laborers for violating a local ordinance against soliciting work in public.

Cesar Perales, president of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented the day laborers, said the decision "means a great deal nationally."

"We're very pleased. The court found that indeed the Village of Mamaroneck had engaged in intentional discrimination and was motivated by racism," said Perales.

Village police chief Edward Flynn, a defendant, declined comment, saying he was reviewing the decision. Mayor Philip Trifiletti and village attorney Kevin Plunkett did not immediately return calls for comment.

After setting up a hiring site on the edge of a park in 2004, the village closed it in February, unhappy at the swelling numbers of laborers. Mamaroneck said its resources were being strained and it wanted other municipalities to take some of the load.

The number of workers went down and those who stayed took to the streets; the village put them and the contractors who came to hire them under increased scrutiny, launching what the judge found to be a campaign of harassment and ticketing.

Six Hispanic immigrant workers -- all identified as John Doe for fear of retaliation by police or immigration authorities -- took the village to court in September, seeking an injunction against what they called selective law enforcement and ethnic discrimination. They said the village violated their right to equal protection when they cracked down on the laborers.

Testifying in Spanish, the laborers -- some in the country illegally -- alleged police intimidation forced them to move from the sidewalks though they were doing nothing wrong.

A man from Guatemala told the judge that one officer "stares at us, from behind dark sunglasses, with one hand on his gun" until the workers move along.

The village argued that it was only enforcing existing laws when it beefed up the police presence in the area around the park and set up traffic checkpoints that inconvenienced the contractors who came looking for temporary workers.

"Our intention was to bring control to an out-of-control situation," Mayor Philip Trifiletti testified, claiming the increase in laborers had produced an increase of quality-of-life complaints from residents. The police chief testified that while the laborer pickup site was open, police received complaints of "drug use, child molestation, public exposures (urination and defecation) and littering" in and near the park.

The judge, however, found that criminal activity in the area around the laborers was "sporadic and unremarkable" and the excuse was "dreamed up to try to legitimate its activity in opposition to the presence of day laborers."

The mayor, a defendant in the lawsuit, said the workers' ethnicity had nothing to do with the crackdown but again, the judge disagreed.

"While defendants deny that race had anything to do with the unremitting hostility they displayed toward the day laborers ... the evidence dramatically undercuts their argument," she said.

She said day laborers were tolerated in years past, when they were white.
"It is fair to infer that the change of racial/ethnic composition of the day laborer pool had something to do with the development of overt hostility toward those seeking per diem work in Mamaroneck," McMahon said.