ACLU: Puerto Rico has pattern of police brutality

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A celebrity-enhanced ACLU delegation criticized Puerto Rico's government Tuesday for using police to keep the island's main university system open during a strike over a new fee, with members saying they found clear evidence in which officers abused students during the protests.

The delegation, which included Oscar-nominated actress Rosie Perez and former major league baseball player Carlos Delgado, said the initial findings of a fact-finding mission found a pattern of excessive police force over the past 18 months involving students, union leaders and journalists.

Their final report, which will be presented to the U.S. Justice Department, is expected by September.

Perez said at a news conference that she was overwhelmed by the testimony of students who said they were brutalized or sexually harassed and groped by police during a series of violent clashes over the $800 fee and budget cuts.

"I was really appalled as to how many of the adults treated many of the young people whether the young people were right or wrong," Perez said. "Yes, there were some bad apples, there were many bad apples in the bunch, but even they have certain rights."

Puerto Rico last year appointed an independent monitor for its police department and announced additional training in April for all officers in response to repeated allegations of brutality and misconduct.

Puerto Rico's Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock, who met with the ACLU delegation along with other island officials, faulted the delegates for announcing their preliminary findings so quickly, saying it suggested they had reached their conclusions before they had started. He said he urged them to expand their focus to include the rights of students and teachers who wanted to go to classes despite the months of protests at island campuses.

"The rights of those thousands of students should be equally entitled to ACLU interest and protection as the rights of the hundreds who participated in the demonstrations," he said.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in response that the group agrees that students have a right to attend classes but that local authorities went to far in using police to keep the university open.

"The university cannot be kept open at any cost," he said.

Source: Associated Press

Ohio refusing some older Puerto Rican birth certificates; national Latino group charges racism

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Elizabeth Torres was stung when her 19-year-old son said he'd been turned down for a state-issued Ohio identification card because his birth certificate from Puerto Rico was considered invalid.

"We're not illegal aliens, we are citizens of this country," Torres said. "We have everything, all the documents and all that, but we are not treated as such."

People born in Puerto Rico are finding that older birth certificates from the U.S. territory are not being accepted when applying for a state ID or driver's license at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, a reaction to concerns about possible fraud that a national Hispanic group said smacks of racial discrimination.

Since early April, the bureau has refused to accept Puerto Rican birth certificates issued before Jan. 1 as proof of identity and date of birth. The policy reflects a law on the island that will invalidate all older birth certificates on Sept. 30, the agency said.

"They are not placing credibility in their certificates," said Ohio BMV spokeswoman Lindsay Komlanc said. "For an agency that uses a birth certificate as one of the primary documents to be able to verify identity, that's something we have to look very hard at."

Ohio already has dealt with cases in which Puerto Rican birth certificates were used fraudulently. In a scheme uncovered in 2008, Puerto Rican certificates were being sold to illegal immigrants in Virginia, and they were then brought to Ohio to obtain state ID cards, Komlanc said.

At the time, federal prosecutors said that Ohio was chosen because it had looser procedures for obtaining identification at licensing bureaus. A federal judge in Harrisonburg, Va., last year sentenced one Columbus woman to a year in prison, while another - a clerk at a licensing office - received 30 months' probation.

Puerto Rico's law change followed raids last year against a criminal ring that stole thousands of birth certificates and other identifying documents from several schools in the U.S. commonwealth. The island is now requiring about 5 million people - including 1.4 million in the U.S. - to apply for new birth certificates with security features.

Puerto Rico began issuing the replacements July 1, but the older birth certificates are still valid for another month, Puerto Rico Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock said.

McClintock said he contacted Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland's deputy legal counsel last week to discuss the issue, arguing that the state was disregarding Puerto Rico's law.

Ohio has the nation's 10th largest Puerto Rican population, according to 2006-2008 Census data. The state had an estimated 26,498 residents born in Puerto Rico; Florida ranked first with 337,408, followed by New York with 318,239.

Based on current information, the Ohio governor's office sees no reason to change the state's policy, Strickland spokeswoman Amanda Wurst said.

"It is in an effort to address the safety and well-being of Ohioans and to avoid issuing identification cards with fraudulently acquired birth certificates," Wurst said.

Brent Wilkes, executive director of the 115,000-member League of United Latin American Citizens in Washington, D.C., charged that any state that has already decided the existing certificates are invalid is acting out of bias.

"Puerto Rico is being victimized because of the fact you've got so much attention on Latino immigrants in the United States," Wilkes said. "Puerto Ricans are not immigrants, but they're still Latinos."

Komlanc countered that Ohio also is cautious with other birth certificates, noting that the state won't accept a version of Indiana's birth certificate that does not include gender.

Representatives from Wilkes' group met Wednesday with Thomas Stickrath, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, which oversees the BMV. He explained the agency's position and appreciated the opportunity for dialogue, Komlanc said. The meeting opened channels of communication, said Marilyn Zayas-Davis, Ohio legal adviser for LULAC.

North Dakota also places restrictions on Puerto Rican birth certificates and will not accept them without backup documentation. The policy has not been much of an issue, said Jamie Olson, a spokeswoman for the state's transportation department.

Other states have handled the Puerto Rican certificates less stringently. For example, officials said Kansas will honor birth certificates from Puerto Rico through Sept. 30, and Hawaii will accept them at least through that date.

Tom Jacobs a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, said the Puerto Rican government's directive caused four days of confusion, "but where we stand now, we will accept Puerto Rican birth certificates."

So will Arkansas, said Michael Munn, assistant commissioner of revenue for operations and administration. He said problems with validity of Puerto Rican birth certificates had arisen in fewer than 10 cases in Arkansas since the issue was brought to his office's attention early in the summer.

In Ohio, Torres' son, Alfredo Pagan, doesn't drive, but needed an Ohio ID card to take his high school equivalency test, his mother explained in her native Spanish.

"My son wants to get a job and help me with the house expenses and all that," said the 40-year-old Torres, a hotel housekeeper who left Puerto Rico 12 years ago and lives in Cleveland.

Ohio is willing to work with people born in Puerto Rico to see if they have other forms of documentation, such as a passport or school records, that can verify their identity, Komlanc said.

She said that part of the process apparently was not followed properly in the case of Alfredo Pagan, and the BMV is trying to contact him.

Author: Doug Whiteman ; Associated Press Writers Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Sandra Chereb in Carson City, Nev.; John Hanna in Topeka, Kan.; Mark Niesse in Honolulu; and, Tom Parsons in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.

Source: Associated Press

Undocumented Puerto Ricans

The government of Puerto Rico has introduced a policy that stands to leave millions of island and stateside Puerto Ricans without a valid identity document. This appears to be a poorly developed policy that Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño must revise.

The policy, scheduled to take effect July 1 of this year, invalidates all birth certificates issued in Puerto Rico. It also bans the submission of original birth certificates to public or private entities within the jurisdiction of Puerto Rico. The new birth certificate is $5, a cost that would be waived for veterans and people 60 and older.

The new policy, as Puerto Rico’s Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock told El Diario-La Prensa recently, is aimed at curbing an underground market for Puerto Rican birth certificates among undocumented immigrants. McClintock said the policy was prompted by a federal government report highlighting an alarming rate of fraud using Puerto Rican birth certificates--supposedly 40 percent of identity theft cases.

This, it turns, is not the case. Long Island University Professor Jose Ramon Sanchez cites the Federal Trade Commission in highlighting that in the United States, the total number of identity fraud cases in any year is 10 million. The Puerto Rico-originated cases of fraud initially cited by McClintock were specifically passport fraud cases, out of a small pool of 8,000 cases. So the Puerto Rican cases represent only 0.00032 percent of identity theft, according to Sanchez’s analysis.

Both the Puerto Rican government and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have said the problem is that different island institutions have requested the submission of original certificates and that poor storage puts and theft put these documents at risk.

This makes the ban on submitting multiple couples of an original birth certificate sensible. But voiding all certificates, even for Puerto Ricans born on the island but raised their entire lives in states, seems to be an exaggerated reaction. We are still waiting for numbers from DHS on the question of how many times a Puerto Rican certificate has been used to illegally cross a U.S. border.

Puerto Rican officials have not explained how a new “enhanced” birth certificate would work and whether it is proven to prevent fraud, nor have they offered the name of the company that would handle this work and what the selection process entailed.

Yet another issue is how an administration that barely has a stateside infrastructure to reach millions of Puerto Ricans and that has severely cut its own governmental workforce would handle information dissemination and the processing of requests. Puerto Ricans could be affected by a voided certificate or a delay, if they rely on benefits that require it, for example.

McClintock has said the Puerto Rico should not get a deluge of requests because most people use a passport or driver’s license for identification.

This is an assumption. And it is a denial of reality as well: most people would want to have an original birth certificate when the document they currently possess is invalidated. McClintock’s response also reflects the government’s out-of-touch attitude. When people in both Puerto Rico and the continental United States are counting their pennies at supermarkets, $5 is an unfair burden. Congressman José Serrano and Latino Justice PRLDEF are among the leaders and organizations that have raised concerns about this policy.

All of this brings us to two fundamental questions: who really benefits from this policy and how well was it thought out?

The prevention of identity theft is most certainly important. But the government of Puerto Rico has a responsibility to retract its messy policy until further independent study is conducted and until there is transparency around the conversations and numbers used to justify its decision.

Source: El Diario la Prensa NY