Frederick County is liable for damages in rights suit

A federal judge ruled Sept. 27 that Frederick County is liable to pay damages in the civil rights lawsuit brought by a Salvadoran woman who the courts found was wrongfully profiled, detained and arrested in 2008 while sitting on a curb eating a sandwich. Roxana Orellana Santos filed the lawsuit in 2009, alleging that Frederick County and its sheriff’s deputies who arrested her had violated her rights by subjecting her to unreasonable searches and seizure. According to court documents, the deputies approached Santos while she ate outside her place of work and asked to see identification. She gave them an identification card from El Salvador, and the deputies arrested her on an outstanding immigration warrant related to her failing to show up to court after having been detained after crossing into the country years before, court records state. Santos lost the suit in District Court but won in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which ruled that local and state authorities cannot arrest or detain someone simply on the suspicion that they are in the country illegally, and that Santos could sue the county, but not the individual deputies. Last week, a judge ruled the county was liable for the policy that permitted deputies to detain people suspected of violating immigration law and that Santos can move forward with seeking damages.