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Color lines NewsA federal judge in Tennessee has ruled in favor of immigrant mother Juana Villegas, who was shackled during labor and after giving birth while being held in the custody of the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, the Tennessean recently reported. U.S. District Court Judge William Haynes Jr. will set a hearing for damages against Metro government and the sheriff’s office in Villegas’ case.
Villegas was nine months pregnant when, on July 3, 2008, she was arrested and charged with careless driving and driving without vehicle insurance. She also didn’t have a diver’s license. Officials then realized Villegas had a previous deportation order to her native Mexico from 1996. Davidson County, where she was arrested, participates in the controversial program 287(g), which deputizes local cops to investigate the immigration status of people they’ve arrested. In an interview with Breakthrough TV, Villegas’ attorney Elliot Ozmet, explains the case:
This case is first of all an immigration case. But it didn’t start out that way. It started out as a simple traffic stop — she was stopped, she was given a ticket for careless driving that still has not been explained to the to Juana. But when she was asked for her driver’s license, she was not able to produce one. The preference for law enforcement for Tennessee is to give a person without a driver’s license a citation. In this particular case the officer decided to take Juana into custody despite the fact that she was 8 1/2 months pregnant and had three children with her in the car.
The sheriff’s office cited the danger of “illegal immigrants fleeing and engaging in illegal activities” to justify shackling Villegas to the bed.
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http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/mom_shackled_during_labor_wins_case.html