Good morning. I would like to thank you for your kind invitation to join this distinguished panel. I would like to thank the leadership of LULAC for their efforts in the area of Civil Rights.
I am here today to talk about the work of the Civil Rights Division. As most of you know, Civil Rights Division has wide jurisdiction to combat bias crimes and discrimination in a variety of contexts – employment, education, housing, and voting, to name but a few. The Civil Rights Division was founded in 1957, and next year we will celebrate our 50th anniversary. We have grown considerably since 1957, both in size and jurisdiction. In 1957 the Division was focused exclusively on the monumental task of ending racial segregation in America and consisted of a handful of dedicated attorneys. We now have more than 350 attorneys and our mandate is much broader, encompassing discrimination based not only on race but also on national origin, sex, religion, disability, and many other areas. As you know, discrimination against members of the Latino community is a continuing challenge and we, at the Civil Rights Division, have dedicated substantial resources to this problem. I want to talk today about some of our successes and challenges in that area. But first, I would like to discuss an issue to great importance to out nation.
Presently, our nation is engaged in a national debate about immigration. There are strong feelings on all sides, but this is a debate that we can, and must, conduct with respect and civility. I want to take a moment to echo President Bush's statement last month that, "America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone . . . We must always remember that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions, and that every human being has dignity and value no matter what their citizenship papers say." The President's sentiments are at the core of what the Civil Rights Division stands for.
Turning to the recent work of the Division, many of you are familiar with the work of our Criminal Section, which prosecutes violation of the federal hate crimes statutes. Such violations encompass violations act of racial, ethnic, or religious hatred that interfere with federally protected rights, such as housing or employment. Federal jurisdiction is limited, but the conduct that we target is very broad and ranges from threats to assaults, cross burnings, and murder. While we continue to aggressively prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and Skinhead groups, many of our defendants have no known hate group affiliation.
The Justice Department is deeply concerned about some recent incidents involving violent attacks on Latinos. Attorneys from the Civil Rights Division are working closely with the FBI to identify, investigate, and prosecute any incidents of bias-motivated violence involving Latino victims who are engaged in federally protected activities.
For example, as LULAC is aware, the Department opened an investigation into the horrific beating and sexual assault of a sixteen-year old boy in Spring, Texas. The Department has also recently opened investigations into the arson of a Mexican bar and grill in San Diego and an arson at the Central Christian Spanish Church in Phoenix.
In the area of human trafficking, the Civil Rights Division has also been incredibly active. In the words of Attorney General Gonzales, “human trafficking is the exploitation and enslavement of society’s most vulnerable members.” Although trafficking victims hail from many countries, including our own, many victims come from impoverished nations in Latin America. Their quest for a new beginning leads them to take chances on alluring work opportunities in the United States that all too often turn their dreams of a better life into nightmares of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and humiliation.
Let me briefly highlight a recent and tragic example of how the most vulnerable in our society are preyed upon by traffickers. Just a few weeks ago, two defendants , Jose Flores Carreto and Gerardo Flores Carreto, were each sentenced to Fifty years in prison for forcing young Mexican women into prostitution in brothels throughout the New York City metropolitan area.
These are some of the longest sentences ever handed down in sex trafficking case, and they send a resounding message that crime of forcing other human beings into sexual servitude will not be tolerated. The Careto defendants preyed on some of the most vulnerable members of our society - young, uneducated, undocumented women from impoverished area of Mexico. These defendants compelled their victims into sexual slavery using brutal beatings, rapes, psychological manipulation and domination, ans enforced isolation, to force the young women to perform acts of prostitution and turn virtually all of the profits over to defendants. The lives of those victims were changed forever when federal agents and local police officers raided the apartments where the victims were held in captivity. Now, the defendants are the ones who will be held behind bars for the next five decades, while the victims move on to live their lives as free human beings.
Another area under the Civil Rights Division’s jurisdiction is, of course, voting. The Bush Administration is strongly committed to reauthorization the Voting Rights Act. I personally testified last month before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution in support of re-authorization of the language minority provisions of the Act. These provisions are instrumental in securing the franchise of voting not only for naturalized citizens but for native citizens as well. Many persons are not aware that, according to the 2000 Census, there are over 4,000,000 native-born Spanish speaking U.S. citizens who do not speak English well enough to participate in the electoral process. Many of those who most benefit from these minority language provisions in the Voting Rights Act are parents and grandparents of members of the United States Armed Forces who have given their lives in the service of this country, or who are now serving in harm’s way. Under the minority language provisions, all citizens are assured of the ability to vote free and informed ballots.
The Division in this Administration has undertaken the most vigorous minority language enforcement in history of the Voting Right Act. Since 2002, we have filed more minority language cases than in the previous twenty-six year history of the Act.
These lawsuits provided comprehensive minority language programs to more Latino citizens than all of our previous minority language cases combined. Over 900,000 Latino voting age citizens have access to minority language voting materials as a result of the enforcement actions of this administration. In fact, most of the language cases filed in this Administration have protected the rights of limited-English speaking Latino citizens, compared with only three cases brought in the first twenty-six years after the 1975 minority language amendments to the Act.
We have brought minority language cases for the benefit of Spanish speaking citizen all over the country, protecting Latino voters in Boston, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona, California and Washington State. These lawsuits have significantly narrowed gaps in minority voter participation. In Yakima County, WA, for example, Hispanic voter registration is up over 24% since our lawsuit in 2004. In San Diego County, Hispanic registration rose over 21% in the period between our lawsuit and the election. Our lawsuits have also made a real difference in treatment of voters. Following our lawsuit in San Diego, officials fired poll workers on the spot when they learned that Latino voters were treated discriminatorily.
We are justifiably proud of our record number of minority language enforcement actions, and we intend to continue vigorous enforcement of these and all other provision of Voting Rights Act.
Turning to employment discrimination, our Employment Litigation Section has devoted considerable resources to initiating investigations of state and local government employers whose hiring practices may discriminate against Hispanics.
For example, in April of this year, the Division reached a Consent Decree to resolve the Department's allegations that the mathematics test administered by the Virginia Beach Police Department to applicants for entry-level police officer positions had a disparate impact against Hispanics and African-Americans in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under the terms of the consent decree, the city will modify its use of the math test to eliminate the statistically significant disparate impact, and provide compensation to otherwise qualified Hispanic and African-American applicants who were wrongfully disqualified in violation of Title VII.
Shifting gears to housing discrimination, in February of this year, the Attorney General announced “Operation Home Sweet Home,” which will focus and expand the Division's Fair Housing Act testing program. Under this program, minority and non-minority tester seek to purchase or rent the same housing. They note discriminatory treatment, which then forms the basis of an Fair Housing Act enforcement action. Over the next two years we will bring the number of these targeted tests to an all-time high, ensuring the rights of all Americans to fairly obtain housing.
Of course, the work of our Housing and Civil Enforcement Section is not limited to our testing program. For example, in March 2004, we filed a complaint and consent decree with the Borough of Bound Brook, New Jersey, alleging the Borough undertook a number of measures to make housing opportunities unavailable to Latinos, including adopting a more stringent Property Maintenance Code, engaging in selective enforcement of the Code, and adopting a Redevelopment Plan which would have displaced a significant number of Latino residents without providing any meaningful alternative affordable housing.
In agreeing to settle the case, the Borough paid $255,000 in damages to 27 victims of its discrimination. The Borough also paid a civil penalty of $30,000. The settlement required the Borough to adopt a new Property Maintenance Code, hire a Bilingual Coordinator to assist Latino residents with housing issues, develop new policies and guidelines regarding code enforcement procedures, and create a new redevelopment plan.
In closing, let me say that Civil rights ultimately are about how we live together as human beings, and about respecting each others' inherent dignity, despite coming from a range of backgrounds with diverse faiths and traditions. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality." We at the Civil Rights Division are proud of out work enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws, but we recognize that much is left to be done. I encourage you to contact us when you learn of civil rights violations so that we can work together to strive for equality for all.
