Immigrant laborers accuse off-duty Chicago cops of racially motivated attacks

CHICAGO (CN) — Five immigrant day laborers filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago on Tuesday, accusing off-duty Chicago police of carrying out a string of "discriminatory, unlawful, and brutal abuses" against them at a local Home Depot.

Joined by the civil and labor rights advocacy group Latino Union, which began investigating the laborers' stories late last year, the laborers bring 17 separate claims of civil rights violations under federal and state law. Defendants include several Chicago police and the city of Chicago itself, alongside Home Depot and the home improvement store's John Doe employees.

The plaintiffs' lead attorney Kevin Herrera, of the labor rights group Raise the Floor Alliance, told Courthouse News he hoped the city would be interested in reaching a "speedy resolution" to the complaint, not discounting the possibility of a settlement.

The site of the laborers' xenophobic attacks is a Home Depot on Chicago's southwest side. Hailing from Venezuela and Colombia, the five have sought day work there since last year among other new arrivals in the city. Home Depot has a policy against solicitation, and the workers claim the company hired the off-duty police as extra security to enforce it.

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs detail incidents between last October and May where they say both the police and Home Depot's own employees illegally detained and beat them inside the store.

"Individual defendant CPD officers and Doe defendants detained Individual plaintiffs either near Home Depot Store #1986 property or on its parking lot and took them into a secluded room inside the store where they were beaten and insulted while handcuffed," the laborers say in their 46-page complaint.

One of the plaintiffs says his wrist was broken by the defendants; another recalls being shoved to the ground and told in Spanish that he "took a shit on the American flag." Police reportedly punched a third plaintiff in the stomach, after which they laughed at him and called him a "pinche Venezolano," Spanish for "fucking Venezuelan."

Three of the laborers further claim the police forced them to sign paperwork in English that they didn't understand, and four were charged with criminal trespass to property. Three of the charged men eventually had their cases dismissed, with the fourth still awaiting a court hearing. Collectively, the plaintiffs say the police department, city and Home Depot conspired to criminalize their attempts to find work through this harassment.

"Defendants city of Chicago, through the Chicago Police Department, Home Depot, and the individual defendants named herein have targeted the individual plaintiffs, and dozens of other migrants perceived to be Venezuelan, in a conspiracy to criminalize day laborers’ attempts to find work in Chicago," the workers say in their complaint. "Chicago Police Department officers working secondary employment at Home Depot Store #1986 have engaged in unchecked abuses of police power while mistreating plaintiffs."

Claims of civil rights abuses against racial minorities are nothing new for the Chicago Police Department. The department's legacy of said abuses — ranging from racial profiling, to framing Black youth for murders, to torture, to murder — is so checkered that in 2019 it entered into a federal court-ordered consent decree meant to curb its worst behaviors. Activists and civil rights groups still accuse the department of slow-walking the reforms five years later, despite the department's internal reporting that it is 74.75% in compliance with the consent decree as of this year.

The laborers make note of this in their lawsuit, saying the abuses they suffered, "while horrifying, are not new." They note another group of day laborers filed a similar federal complaint against the police in June 2008, though that complaint was dismissed several months later when no attorneys appeared for a planned scheduling conference.

Herrera also said the department needs to be better at monitoring its officers' off-duty jobs, particularly in security.

"Our aim with this lawsuit is to push the city and the police department to change how they handle officers' secondary employment, their 'moonlighting,'" he said.

The laborers also criticize the city, state and federal governments for their role in shaping their conditions.

Since the summer of 2022, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has bussed thousands of newly arrived immigrants to Chicago and other Democrat-controlled cities as part of an explicit political attack on the Biden administration. The sudden arrival of the immigrants in Chicago — many during the coldest parts of the year — has strained the city's ability to care for them. It has also prompted months of political skullduggery and enflamed racial tensions, particularly among Black community leaders who bemoaned that the city and state were spending millions to accommodate the new arrivals while their own communities remained chronically divested.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration announced this past November that new arrivals' stay in city-administered shelters would be limited to 60 days, a policy the city began enforcing in March. The move was lambasted as inhumane by immigrants rights groups and City Hall progressives at the time, and in Tuesday's complaint the laborers accused the policy of increasing their risk of homelessness — in turn pushing them to find whatever work they can.

The Biden administration did expand temporary protected status eligibility for nearly 500,000 Venezuelan immigrants a year ago, making it easier for them to find jobs. But the expansion only applies to those who arrived in the U.S. on or before July 31, 2023, and only lasts 18 months. The stipulations exclude many new immigrants and asylum speakers, as well as longtime undocumented immigrants from other countries.

"Most asylum seekers must wait at least six months before the federal government will grant them employment authorization documents providing a route to employment in the formal economy," the laborers say in their complaint.

Despite this, Herrera said the laborers' aim is not to prompt change at the federal level. Instead, he said their focus is on themselves and on the city's complicity for their physical and verbal abuse. Herrera further said his clients hope to see institutional reform in how the city handles policing and immigration, but acknowledged one federal lawsuit might not be enough to spark that change.

"Our hope is that there's institutional change from here, but we recognize there's limitations to litigation," he said.

In addition to compensatory and punitive damages, the plaintiffs seek a finding that their civil rights have been violated and an order barring all defendants from engaging in discriminatory actions — on duty and off.

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