"This is our civil rights movement," Saenz said. "I guess it's our turn now. What the blacks did in the '60s, I guess we are going to do in the 2000s."

For Enrique Bautista, a turning point came last year at a Franklin driver's license office.

A worker took his Tennessee-issued ID and U.S. government-issued green card and disappeared for 20 minutes. When she came back, it was to say she'd be keeping the documents on suspicion they were fake. Bautista, a legal permanent resident, was stunned. He'd never been in trouble with the law. He'd raised five children in the United States, working hard here for decades.

But with no ID of any kind, Bautista would be unable to visit family in Mexico for Christmas or even leave the house without fear.

So, last month, he sued the Tennessee Department of Safety and joined the ranks of Tennessee Latinos filing civil rights lawsuits against state and local governments. They're claiming policies and actions are directly aimed at making Tennessee a less attractive place to settle, even for legal immigrants.

Observers and the plaintiffs themselves say the suits are the strongest evidence so far of a social turning point — a refusal to keep living anonymously and in fear.

"I wanted justice," said Bautista, a 60-year-old construction worker who lives in Franklin. "I just want justice … and to be able to get my license in peace."

A Department of Safety spokesman wouldn't comment directly on the case but said, in general, it is the agency's policy to investigate suspicious documents.

Three major cases have been filed this year alone: Bautista's, one against Metro government over a proposed English-only amendment, and one against the governor and Davidson County Clerk's Office over marriage licenses.

"No less than Thomas Jefferson said all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain infallible rights," said immigration attorney Elliott Ozment, who is representing Bautista. "The reality is that all people who are present in this country — legally or undocumented — have certain fundamental rights."

There could be more to come. Ozment said measures such as the state's new Illegal Alien Employment Act and Davidson County's 287(g) program — which gives local deputies limited authority to enforce federal immigration law — are driving ordinary immigrants to call the government on its promise.

'Our civil rights movement'

For lawyer Vanessa Saenz, the turning point was a series of phone calls from people looking for help but unwilling to formally protest their inability to obtain a Tennessee marriage license. When the same thing happened to Saenz, a U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico engaged to an immigrant, she sued Gov. Phil Bredesen and Davidson County Clerk John Arriola. She and her fiancé were denied a marriage license when he couldn't produce a Social Security card.

County clerks in Tennessee have asked for a Social Security card since 1998, or, failing in that, a valid passport and visa. Saenz's fiancé had only a passport. Tennessee’s policy was enacted as part of a federal initiative to make it easier to track parents who failed to pay child support.

Saenz has taken calls in her office for years from people in her same situation. She's even heard stories about a Kentucky judge just over the Tennessee line who has set up an entire marriage market to serve Tennesseans who cross the state line looking for a place where those without Social Security cards can marry.

She hired one of Nashville's best-known civil rights lawyers, George Barrett, and filed suit, claiming the policy was affecting the ability of Tennessee residents to exercise a constitutionally protected right.

"This is our civil rights movement," Saenz said. "I guess it's our turn now. What the blacks did in the '60s, I guess we are going to do in the 2000s."

The case came to an end in May after the attorney general essentially agreed with Saenz in court documents. He instructed every county clerk in the state to stop denying marriage licenses to those who could not provide Social Security cards.

Will lawsuits spur change?

There is no doubt that states now are seen as the battleground for what could not be accomplished by legislators in Washington, said Jessica Vaughan. She's a senior policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based research organization that advocates for stricter immigration policies.

Vaughan said the unintended consequences of such policies around the country have begun to surface. But that is not a reason to roll those policies back completely, she said.

"No law or legislation is ever perfectly surgical in its application and its impact," Vaughan said. "That's not completely to say that the ends justify the means, but it sounds like some of these things ... are more of a management problem than a conceptual problem."

It's tough to say whether the lawsuits can launch a major change in political consciousness among Tennessee Latinos, said Efren Perez, a Vanderbilt University political scientist. Most of them are new to the state, whereas other states such as California and Texas have a multigenerational presence.

Still, there's evidence to suggest that a 1990s-era California proposal that limited illegal immigrants' access to a number of public services — later found unconstitutional — galvanized Latino political participation and enhanced the sense of group concern.

"The message that people who are behind these policies — people who support them and people who pass them — the messages they are intending may not be the message that people receive," Perez said. "Feeling unwelcome does not mean that you are going to pack up and go home."

Man refused to sign notice

For Bautista, who speaks only limited English, interacting with government agencies is always an anxiety-filled experience. He went to the Franklin driver's license office in November 2007 and failed the exam. When he came back eight days later to try again, as instructed, workers took the cards and asked him to sign a "notice of document seizure."

He refused.

"I told her that I wouldn't sign, that it wasn't right," Bautista said. "They are the driver's license office. They don't have the right to confiscate my green card, my ID maybe, but not my green card. I told her I wouldn't sign."

In January, the office sent a letter acknowledging Bautista's documents were legal. It asked him to come pick them up.

Contact Janell Ross at 615-726-5982 or jross1@tennessean.com.