The immigrant advocacy group CASA de Maryland has gone to court to force the Frederick County Sheriff's Office to release immigration enforcement statistics.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Montgomery County (web|news) Circuit Court.

The group is seeking information about the county's relationship with the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency oversees a program in which 26 county deputies have been trained to enforce federal immigration laws.

CASA believes the program leads to racial profiling. CASA director Gustavo Torres wants assurances the program is not violating the constitutional rights of people living in Frederick County.

The sheriff's office is denying that it illegally withheld public information about its participation in a federal immigration enforcement program.

Sheriff Charles Jenkins says his office gave CASA de Maryland all the documents it could legally give after the group's initial public-information request last spring.

Jenkins says CASA has balked at paying thousands of dollars for processing a more recent request for what he called "a huge amount of records" detailing arrests of illegal immigrants.

The group filed a lawsuit in Montgomery County on Tuesday alleging Jenkins' office won't release statistics on a program that allows local law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of people they stop for other reasons.





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Information from: The Frederick (Md.) News-Post.

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