ICIRR hot after MCSD

This morning's Northwest Herald carried a front-page article about the Illinois Coalition for Immgrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and its interest in racial profiling by deputies of the McHenry County Sheriff's Department. It seems like ICIRR is not buying the sheriff's story that there hasn't been racial profiling at MCSD.

Imagine that.

The relationship between Sheriff Keith Nygren and ICIRR wasn't always antagonistic. It seems to me that two-to-three years ago he was on their Board of Directors. I recall seeing his name listed on the website as a Board member at http://www.icirr.org/ And then, the next time I looked, it was gone.

I have called the office of Joshua Hoyt, the Executive Director of ICIRR, to learn when Nygren was on the Board of Directors. I called about a year ago. When no one called me back, I let it slide at the time. Now I'm more interested, since the ICIRR wants the U.S. Department of Justice civil rights' division to investigate allegations of racial profiling.

When you visit ICIRR's website, you'll see that they are concerned about efforts to "stock" the ICE detention centers with detainees, because that's such a good money-maker for jail operations, whether in McHenry County or elsewhere.

Do deputies really park at Willow Brooke Apartments in Woodstock and watch for violators?

Or, worse, do they watch for a brown face to drive by, run the license plate through the computer and stop the car if there is no driver's license associated with the registered owner of the vehicle?

What's unfair about that? The deputy would have no way of being sure that the driver of the vehicle was actually the owner of the vehicle. They need to observe a violation to have probable cause for stopping that particular driver. If they get "lucky" and stop an unlicensed driver, it can be off to jail and then up to the ICE detention unit, if the driver is not legally in the U.S.