Changes in Police Policy, Payouts to Latino Victims of Traffic Stops and Arrests Following Investigations – By Dale Russakoff and Deborah Sontag (ProPublica) / April 8, 2022
The state of Pennsylvania paid $865,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed in the wake of a 2018 ProPublica investigation of traffic stops of Latino drivers by its state police working with immigration authorities.
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The state of Pennsylvania has agreed to pay $865,000 to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that its state troopers routinely and unconstitutionally pulled over Latino drivers, demanded their “papers” and held them and their passengers for pickup by federal immigration authorities — a practice that escalated markedly after President Donald Trump took office in 2017.
The complaint, filed by the Pennsylvania ACLU and drawing in part on a 2018 series of ProPublica articles published in collaboration with The Philadelphia Inquirer, detailed cases of state troopers stopping and then detaining immigrants under the auspices of federal immigration laws, which it alleged they had no authority to enforce. The immigrants were engaged in ordinary, legal activities, according to the complaint: traveling to see family members, driving to or from work, buying a soda in a state police barracks, awaiting medical help following a traffic accident or, in one case, returning from a job interview accompanied by a wife who was nine months pregnant.
Three of six incidents recounted in the complaint were carried out by one state police officer, Luke Macke, whose practices were revealed in the ProPublica articles.
