Hispanics accuse border patrol agents of profiling in Ohio

OLEDO, Ohio (AP) — U.S. Border Patrol agents who watch over northern Ohio not far from the Canadian border routinely engaged in racial profiling to roundup Hispanics and often used racially offensive terms to describe them, an attorney told a federal judge today.

Two groups that work with Hispanics in Ohio filed a lawsuit against the border patrol, accusing the agency of targeting and detaining Hispanics solely based on their ethnicity.

"The border patrol was basically going out and hunting people with brown skin," said John Murray, an attorney representing the two groups.

A lawyer from the U.S. Justice Department told the judge that part of the border patrol's mission was to arrest people who are illegally in the country, but he denied that agents were profiling Hispanics and said that statistics don't back up the claims of discrimination.

The government argued that the plaintiffs' analysis of border patrol logs was flawed and did not show racial profiling.

The lawsuit brought by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and the Immigrant Worker Project said the agency's logs show a disproportionate number of stops involving Hispanics.