Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Two Border Patrol agents accused of forcing drug smugglers to strip and eat marijuana are on trial this week on civil rights charges, the Huffington Post reports. Authorities said the border patrol agents left the four undocumented immigrants, wearing nothing but their underwear, to fend for themselves in the cold desert…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com More than 20 New Yorkers will receive a combined $1 million in a settlement with ICE over warrantless raids on their homes, WNYC reports. Under the settlement, ICE also must change some of its policies and training involving searches. “Sleeping while Latino is not a suspicious activity that justifies ICE’s forcing its…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The FBI is investigating whether a Pittsburgh police detective was out of control when he pulled a Taser on a man in Pittsburgh over the weekend, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. The incident captured a national audience after a cell phone video caught Detective Frank Rende walking up to a man and…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com President Obama is expected to nominate Thomas Perez, a civil rights expert, as his choice to head the Department of Labor, the Associated Press reports. Head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division since 2009, the 51-year-old could be nominated as early as today. Perez led an effort to challenge voter ID…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The FBI is releasing dozens of investigative files involving civil rights-era photographer Ernest Withers as part of a lawsuit with The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tenn., CNN reports. Among the files is an investigation of Martin Luther King Jr. while in Memphis in 1968, CNN reported. The bureau also examined the NAACP,…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s and fought against legislation protecting black people, received secret FBI records about the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the Associated Press reports. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who died in June 2010, suspected Communists and others…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Attorney General Eric Holder pledged Tuesday to aggressively challenge new voter restriction efforts during a speech at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Houston, the New York Times reports. “In our efforts to protect voting rights and to prevent voting fraud, we will be vigilant and strong,” Mr….
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Hispanics in Arizona protested outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, expressing concern that they’ll be subjected to racial profiling following Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court Decision, Bloomberg reports. While the court struck down three provisions of the Arizona immigration law, the justices left intact the requirement that local police check the immigration…
