New Jersey police are arresting Latinos and questioning them about their immigration status in order to denounce them to immigration authorities, according to a new study.

The study, published by the Center for Social Justice at the School of Law at Seton Hall University, revealed this racist and illegal practice by the police to be the result of an official order issued by the Attorney General of New Jersey, Anne Milgram, in 2007.

The order, established directly after the murder of three students in Newark, in which an undocumented immigrant was suspected of committing the crime, instructed state and local authorities to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in case of arresting people suspected of being undocumented, for un-indictable offenses or for driving under the influence of alcohol.

Nevertheless, the study, which took nine months to complete and in which 68 immigrants were interviewed, 65 of them Latino, 49 denounced having been arrested for minor traffic offenses and 19 for having been arrested in the street. All of them were referred to ICE.

Juan (not his real name) said that the police arrested him for reckless driving, but his crime was processed as driving without a license; he remained in jail in Bridgetown for four months before being transferred into the hands of ICE.

Miguel, (not his real name), arrested in Flemington while riding his bicycle, said that authorities asked for his identification, and upon seeing his papers from Honduras, the police detained him for several days and then referred him to ICE.

The order, besides specifying the cases in which police can ask about immigration status and refer those arrested to ICE, also specifies the cases in which is it prohibited. Police cannot question a victim or a witness of a crime for any reason.

However, the study also found cases where that provision was violated. Valentina was arrested after she called the police because she was a victim of a car accident.

Mateo was attacked by two men in the street and when the police arrived at the scene they arrested him, detained him for two days and then transferred him to ICE.

Between September 2007 and March 2008, 10,000 people were arrested by the police according to the study, and of these only 1,417 cases were processed as violation of immigration laws.

According to Scott Weber, director of the ICE office in Newark, during the first six months after the order was issued, one in three people referred to ICE were citizens or legal residents.

This is worrying in a state where more than half of the 1.7 million people born outside of the United States are citizens or legal residents and 45 percent of them are Latino.

The Attorney General was informed of the abuse of the order, according to the study; however, since she didn't have written documentation, she did not proceed to investigate the abuse before the publication of the study.

"We want to investigate all allegations made in this report that violate the order. We have asked the Center of Information about the 68 individuals cited here that allege racial profiling and wrongful transfers to ICE authorities," said David Wald, the spokesperson for the Attorney General, according to El Diario/La Prensa.