The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Immigration Project and civil rights attorney Brian Spears filed a federal civil rights lawsuit last month against two Cobb County police officers over the stop, arrest and beating of an unarmed Latino man. They also joined the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) to call on the federal government to terminate the county's 287(g) agreement due to the civil rights abuses perpetuated by the program.
The lawsuit was filed on August 23rd on behalf of Angel Francisco Castro Torres, who was riding his bicycle in Smyrna when he was stopped by Cobb County police officers Jeremiah M. Lignitz and Brian J. Walraven.
In the lawsuit, Castro said he was riding his bike and passed in front of the officers' car, which was waiting at a red light on an intersecting road. The officers turned to follow Castro and then stopped him, according to the lawsuit.
The officers asked for his identification, questioned his immigration status and arrested him, the lawsuit said. During the arrest, Castro said the officers assaulted him, breaking bones in his nose and left eye socket. Castro said in the lawsuit that he did not resist arrest and complied with the officers' demands.
In their police incident report, the officers wrote that they stopped Castro because he failed to yield to traffic and almost hit their patrol car. They said Castro gave his name when asked but repeatedly refused to give them his date of birth, which they needed to identify him.
The officers claimed Castro then tried to run away, and when they grabbed him and tried to handcuff him against their car, he tried to grab Lignitz's stun gun. "I struck the male with my forearm in the face to make him release his grip on my Taser," Lignitz wrote in his report. "The male complied and handcuffs were applied."
According to the lawsuit the officers attempted to cover up the attack by transporting Castro to the Cobb County Jail, which has a 287(g) agreement that feeds arrested individuals into the federal immigration system.
After being held for four months, Castro was released last week when the two officers named in the lawsuit failed to appear at a hearing regarding the charges they brought against him. He required surgery to repair the damage to his eye. 
"These officers stopped Mr. Castro for no other reason than the color of his skin," said Brian Spears, civil rights attorney and co-counsel. "Riding a bike while not being white is not a crime."
"The discrimination and abuse that Mr. Castro suffered is far too common in Cobb and other 287(g) counties in the Atlanta area," said Adelina Nicholls, executive director of GLAHR.
"This case is just the latest in a string demonstrating that racial profiling is the standard mode of operation in Cobb County, Georgia," said Sam Brooke, an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The federal government must put an immediate stop to these civil rights abuses by ending this program."
Since July 2007, Cobb County has participated in the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) 287(g) program, which authorizes local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law. In the first two years of implementing the program, nearly 6,500 suspected undocumented immigrants have been detained.