Around noon, on April 10, 2017, Alicia Amaya Carmona glanced through her partially closed blinds at the Wing Pointe apartment complex in Heber City, Utah. What the 48-year-old grandmother saw terrified her.

A group of men in blue and green vests, carrying assault weapons and pistols, were running through the parking lot towards the apartment she shared with her son and her daughter-in-law. She grabbed her grandchildren who were awake and ran to the master bedroom where her other grandchildren were napping. Loud knocking ripped through the apartment. Suddenly the men burst into the apartment. “Come out with your hands up!” one shouted.

Frightened, Carmona came out of the master bedroom into the living room with her hands up. Her four grandchildren, all U.S. citizens, stood behind her, screaming and crying out of fear. The men pointed their assault weapons and pistols at Carmona and the children. First, Carmona was ordered out of the apartment and told she could not touch nor speak to her grandchildren. The children, all barefoot, were then ordered out of the apartment, too. The temperature was in the 40s.

The heavily armed men, members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Marshals, finally let Carmona know why they were there. They were after Carmona’s husband, Abel Ramirez Sr., who had been indicted for illegal reentry six years before. Illegal reentry is not a violent crime, yet the family saw this group of federal officers armed for war burst into the apartment without a warrant.

Carmona told the men she didn’t know where her husband was. The men arrested her, even though she had done nothing wrong and had no criminal record. They told her that they would put her grandchildren in state custody if she didn’t get her sons to come home immediately. When her son Eduardo Ramirez — who had status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — arrived at the apartment, the men detained him, too. They clasped the handcuffs so tight that they left marks around his wrists that remained for over a month.

Soon Alicia’s other sons Abel Jr. and Carlos, also DACA recipients, arrived home from work to find their brother and mother in handcuffs. Then Carlos’s wife, Berenice, arrived home from work. Also a DACA recipient, she saw an agent holding her terrified and crying two-year-old daughter J.R. while claiming he couldn’t “control” her. The agent put the child down outside and when Berenice picked the child up, another agent ordered her to not come near any of her children or the other members of her family.

Eventually, the agents released Eduardo, but they took Alicia into custody. As one agent told Carlos, they “had to take somebody.” When Carlos and Berenice returned to their apartment, they found it ransacked. Blankets and clothing were everywhere. Closet doors were off their hinges.

The day was over. The family was traumatized. But their nightmare was far from over. Early the next morning an ICE agent called Carlos to tell him he could “trade” Carmona for information about the location of his father. The agent continued to pressure Carlos to give up his father by sending repeated text messages during the day. When Carlos stopped responding, the agent sent him single-word message: “congratulations.”

Later that night even more officers from ICE and the U.S. Marshals returned to the family’s apartment. This time they came with a battering ram. Around 10 p.m., the apartment door burst open. The men entered the dark apartment, screaming at Berenice and her children with their weapons trained on them. They then forced Berenice out of the apartment for questioning about her father-in-law. Once again, they didn’t have a warrant, though they shouted they had one before breaking down the door.

Eventually, Carlos, Eduardo, and Abel Jr. arrived. One of the agents told them that they were wasting their money fighting their mother’s detention. They couldn’t win “against ICE” with “Trump’s new law.” The agents rolled out at around midnight. Alicia would remain in detention for another month when the family was able to bail her out.

What transpired those two days in April 2017 is a frightening look into President Trump’s new era of draconian enforcement of immigration laws, often in violation of the Fourth Amendment. This family, especially these young children, are now understandably terrified by any police officer. The children may never go up to law enforcement even if in danger and needing help.

Raids like the one this family experienced have led to both a jump in the number of immigration arrests of individuals with no criminal history as well as a sharp drop in reporting of crimes from Latinos in numerous cities nationwide where immigrant communities. Trump has unleashed ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies across America. Public safety will be the casualty.

But this time, ICE and the U.S. Marshals picked on the wrong family. With the help of the ACLU of Utah Foundation, Inc., the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, and Covington & Burling, LLP, the family is suing the agents involved in the raids for violating their Fourth Amendment rights and using excessive force. The United States is governed by the rule of law, most notably the Bill of Rights, a concept the Trump administration can’t seem to wrap its head around.

When Roz, a mother raising three children with special needs on a razor-thin budget in Washington, wrote a check for $41.19 to Goodwill to buy secondhand clothing for her children, she had no idea it would lead to threats of criminal prosecution and jail. But that’s exactly what happened when the check bounced, and her inability to pay a bill led to her being sucked into the criminal justice system.

That the check bounced because of a banking mix-up didn’t matter. Roz received a letter in the mail that looked like it had been sent by her local prosecutor. The letter stated she had been accused of the crime of issuing a worthless check and she had to pay the amount of the check plus $185 in fees within 10 days “to avoid the possibility of criminal charges being filed.”

The threats for failure of nonpayment did not end there.

In the ensuing weeks, the letters and calls kept coming, demanding Roz pay more even after she sent a money order for $85. She was terrified. She did not want to be prosecuted. So she ultimately paid the $41 plus nearly $220 in fees, a staggering amount for a mother on a budget who was already struggling to make ends meet.

What she didn’t know was that even though the letters bore the prosecutor’s seal, they were actually sent by a private company called Bounceback, Inc. that had paid the prosecutor’s office for permission to use its seal to threaten criminal prosecution. She also didn’t know that the prosecutor’s office, as a matter of policy, didn’t bring criminal charges in cases of bounced checks of under $50. The threats were hollow, but the harm caused to her was real.

Moreover, there was no evidence that the prosecutor reviewed any evidence related to her bounced check or that she would have been prosecuted if she didn’t pay the fees.

Every state has criminal laws dealing with bad or bounced checks and prosecutors are required to review these cases to determine if they are subject to prosecution. But in many places, district attorneys seeking to get these cases off their desks have decided to hand over enforcement to private collection companies even when no crime has been committed. More than 200 local district attorneys’ offices have entered into partnerships with private debt collection companies like Bounceback that get people to pay. Some companies are allowed to use the district attorney’s letterhead to threaten people with criminal prosecution, jail and fines.

It’s estimated that more than one million consumers who bounce checks each year receive letters threatening criminal prosecution and jail time. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has found that less than 1 percent of cases handled by the largest of these check collection companies were examined by a prosecutor for possible criminal prosecution.

Worse still, the companies collect not only restitution for the unpaid check, but they also tack on a variety of fees, including fees to attend a diversion program run by these same companies. The diversion programs are usually a class on financial responsibility, which may cost the check writer more than $200 – sometimes far more than the value of the bounced check. The programs are required by the companies, not the prosecutor, and sometimes the companies don’t even bother to schedule the class once the consumer has paid the fees.

Some portion of these fees, depending on the contract, is then funneled to the district attorneys’ offices. For example, as of November 2015, the district attorney’s office in Orange County, California, has received $2.54 million in total revenue from its check collection program operated by the for-profit company CorrectiveSolutions.

Few, if any, of the bounced checks that result in threatening collection letters qualify for criminal charges. We found cases in which threatening letters were sent for bounced checks as low as $2, clearly too low to meet the criteria for criminal prosecution, usually more than $50 to $2,000, depending on the state. One lawyer who has been fighting these check collection tactics in the courts since 2001 told the ACLU he has documented over 10,000 checks for under $10 that triggered letters threatening consumers with jail, including bounced checks for as little as one penny.

An ACLU report describes numerous cases in which check writers were wrongly threatened with prosecution and jail, including a wheelchair-bound retiree living in a senior living facility for bouncing a check for $108 at Walmart; a single mother for bouncing a check for $48 for groceries she purchased at Walmart; a woman in Los Angeles for bouncing a check for $3.87 at Ralphs grocery store who paid $444.87 in fees; and a 75-year-old woman living on $800 monthly Social Security checks who went without her medications to pay the fees she believed were required to avoid jail time for bouncing a check.

Read the report on the criminalization of private debt

These contracts between check collection companies and prosecutors’ offices violate standards of professional conduct and the due process rights of consumers, and in most instances, prey on the most vulnerable. District attorneys can terminate these contracts, and they should do so immediately. More than 1,000 local D.A.s are up for election in 2018. Anyone seeking these elected offices should commit to ending these abusive contracts, and voters should pay attention to where these candidates stand on this issue when casting their votes later this year.

Do you have a warrant issued or threatened in a private debt collection case? If so please contact us at [email protected].

The Barrow County Sheriff’s Office is holding a “training course” on Wednesday apparently approved by the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police. The title, “Islam in America,” sounds educational and harmless. But the course description and instructor tell another story that raises questions about the goals of law enforcement in Georgia.

The course instructor, David Bores, has a documented history of making inaccurate and dangerous statements regarding Muslims and Islam, claiming that Muslims are not entitled to the same rights as other communities. A retired lieutenant general of the U.S. Army and former law enforcement officer, Bores has conducted several trainings over the years that appear to be in the same vein.

In 2013, he taught “Islamist Ideology: Does it Conflict with our Law Enforcement Mission” at the Dawson County Sheriff’s Office Law Enforcement Center in Nebraska. The course description implied that Muslims are not entitled to the religious liberty that all religious communities are afforded under the Constitution. “[M]any believe we must automatically grant to it [Islam] the rights and privileges offered to other expressions of worship,” the description stated, “lest we be accused of being politically incorrect, of being intolerant of multi-cultural beliefs, or worse, of being labeled Islamophobic.”

More recently, in 2016, Bores presented “The Current Threat of Islamism” to the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association. This presentation was riddled with misrepresentations of Muslims and Islam, unsubstantiated statistics, and images of non-white men, representing them as “rapists” or violent. One image included a photograph of people with a sign that says, “Rapists Welcome,” in reference to Muslims and refugees. 

Another photograph, displayed by Bores, showed a woman whose hair and face are covered. “We have no idea who is underneath that,” he said. “We have no idea if they are carrying weapons or bombs. Nothing. It is a security issue. It has no religious significance.” With these words, Bores dismissed the religious beliefs and practices of those who choose to cover themselves in this way as well as the autonomy of women to dress as they choose. Simultaneously, he informed attendees that all Muslims who do make this choice are inherently suspect, dangerous, and violent.

For the Barrow County training this Wednesday, Bores appears to go down the same path. The course description includes language that has long been used to create unfounded fear and suspicion of Muslims, such as “jihadist enemy,” “Grand Jihad,” and “Muslim Brotherhood.” It also references “Challenges to LE [Law Enforcement] and the Constitution.” This description likely references Bores’s repeated false claims that Muslims are trying to undermine the Constitution and impose Sharia—Islamic canonical law. Not only is this simply not happening, but the First Amendment already prohibits U.S. courts from imposing Sharia or any other religious law.

Bores clearly comes from a place of bias, making it harmful for him to train law enforcement officers who play an essential role in the safety of our communities. Police officers must operate from a place of objectivity and safety rather than stereotypes and distrust. Not only does the substance of his past courses indicate the inaccuracy of his knowledge, it also reveals his bigotry.

Bores’s influences and associations are also evidence of his anti-Muslim animus. He has aligned himself and his teachings with others who express this bigotry. For example, his 2016 training includes references to the actions of Pamela Gellar, who is well known for her promotion of anti-Muslim policies. He was also an adjunct instructor on “radical Islam” for the Center of Security Policy, an organization with a history of advocating anti-Muslim policies and conspiracy theories.

Local communities and advocacy organizations, including the ACLU of Georgia, are urging the Barrow County sheriff to cancel Bores’s training and the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police to withdraw its approval. Inaccurate and biased training undermine law enforcement’s duty to serve and protect all communities equally. Sheriffs and chiefs of police have a responsibility to ensure their officers uphold the law and protect communities — rather than teaching them to discriminate against people based upon their faith.