By Jane M. Von Bergen
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — The American Civil Liberties Union is exploring whether it can file a lawsuit on behalf of 26 immigrant cabdrivers, mostly from Africa, lured into a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sting by the Philadelphia Parking Authority.
The Parking Authority sent letters to the drivers telling them to stop by a South Philadelphia depot on June 30 to pick up money they were owed. As they arrived, a receptionist checked identification. Then the drivers were ushered, one by one, into a back room, where they were handcuffed. Four remain in detention.
“I think it’s outrageous,” ACLU attorney Mary Catherine Roper said after a rally Wednesday by more than 100 drivers and supporters outside a Parking Authority building at 31st and Market Streets.
“For one government agency to send out a lie, a false promise of money to the drivers it regulates in order to bring them in so they can be handcuffed and deprived of their rights - it’s outrageous that they lied to these people,” Roper said.
That’s not the way immigration officials see it.
“It’s not uncommon to set up operations to bring the people you want to you,” said agency spokesman Mark Medvesky. “It keeps the public safe, it keeps the officers safe, and it keeps the subjects safe.”
Medvesky said Immigration and Customs Enforcement set up the operation as part of its antiterrorism mission to increase security at Philadelphia International Airport, where cabs have access to areas unavailable to most of the public.
“They can linger in areas like the airport unnoticed for long periods of time,” he said.
Of the 26 drivers, three were released because they are U.S. citizens, four were taken into detention, and the rest await immigration hearings, he said. Some must wear electronic monitoring devices on their ankles.
Parking Authority spokesman Martin O’Rourke said the agency agreed to cooperate with the investigation.
Wednesday’s rally was organized by the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania.
“We think this is an injustice,” Femi Olaniyi, the alliance’s vice president, said at the rally. He scoffed at the terrorist angle: “What is it? Osama bin Cabbie?”
Cabdrivers have to produce their immigration paperwork each year to renew their taxi permits, Olaniyi said.
That’s true, Medvesky said, but the Parking Authority can judge only on the paperwork presented. “We can dig deeper,” he added.
The immigration office spent months looking at 5,000 drivers’ records from the Parking Authority, Medvesky said, and identified about 100 questionable ones.
Among those nabbed but released was Gazali Shittu, 40, of Upper Darby. In 1998, he arrived in the United States from Burkina Faso in Africa; he said he became a citizen in 2006.
How his name got on the immigration list, “that’s what I don’t understand,” he said in an interview at the rally.
Using a ruse isn’t unusual. In November 2008, 85 fugitives responded to a letter from a bogus “Philadelphia Commission of Economic Revitalization” telling them to come in to receive refunds for “unpaid government benefits and overpayments.”
When they showed up at a phony office in Suburban Station, police arrested them.
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