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Urgent: Citizens and Immigrants with Mental Disabilities Need Congress's AttentionMark Lyttle, a native-born U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent with mental disabilities, was deported after an immigration court hearing in 2008 at which he had no lawyer. Despite the fact that he spoke no Spanish and was known to have spent time in a psychiatric hospital, he endured more than four months of living on the streets and in the shelters and prisons of Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Jose Antonio Franco-Gonzalez, an immigrant from Mexico with severe cognitive disabilities, was declared incompetent by an immigration court in 2005 when he had no lawyer. His case was closed and he was forgotten in detention for four-and-a-half years, at a cost likely exceeding $300,000. And Guillermo Gomez Sanchez, a lawful permanent resident of the United States and native of Mexico who has paranoid schizophrenia, also spent four-and-a-half years in immigration detention after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to administer a psychiatric evaluation. They and other detainees inspired a pending class action lawsuit by the ACLU of Southern California and its litigation partners in California, Arizona and Washington. The three horrors described are examples of the suffering that occurs all too commonly when U.S. citizens and immigrants with mental disabilities are lost, sometimes for years, in an unfair and disorganized immigration system. As a comprehensive Human Rights Watch/ACLU report documented in 2010, the lack of due process protections for individuals with mental disabilities in the immigration system leads to frequent wrongful detentions and deportations. The federal government has failed to adopt and implement standards to ensure fair immigration court hearings for individuals with mental disabilities. The common elements in these cases are the absence of attorneys and the government’s failure to evaluate mental health adequately. Today, Rep. Pete Stark introduced H.R. 3881, the Ensuring Mental Competence in Immigration Proceedings Act. This legislation would fix this problem and improve the choices available to individuals with mental disabilities in immigration court by increasing their proceedings’ fairness. Rep. Stark’s bill clarifies immigration judges’ existing authority by recognizing their basic tools for achieving due process: they may order competency evaluations and either terminate cases when it would be unfair to proceed or require the appointment of counsel (84 percent of immigration detainees lack attorneys). Currently, immigration judges who terminate proceedings risk government appeals, which prolong both the cases and expensive detention. Rep. Stark’s legislation would simultaneously reduce detention costs, which exceed $60,000 annually per person, and also ameliorate the overwhelming case backlog in immigration courts. Rep. Stark’s bill would benefit all stakeholders who aspire to an accurate and efficient immigration system that respects due process. The ACLU urges Congress to pass it swiftly so that abusive treatment of citizens and immigrants with mental disabilities is no longer a regular characteristic of our immigration system. Learn more about immigrants' rights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: immigrants' rights, immigration detention, mental illness
ACLU Client Scott Douglas on The Colbert ReportLast night on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert interviewed Scott Douglas III, executive director of the Greater Birmingham Ministries. Douglas is a plaintiff in the ACLU and a coalition of civil rights groups’ lawsuit challenging H.B. 56, Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law.
In this video, Douglas talks about why he’s a plaintiff in our case:
Douglas told Colbert: “H.B. 56 is a threat to me and all Americans.” We hope the court agrees. Learn more about anti-immigrant discrimination: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: Alabama, hb56, Scott Douglas III
Getting Joe Arpaio in Sync with the Constitution and Away from Racial Profiling The rule of law and how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio runs his office are often mutually exclusive. Arpaio, whose jurisdiction includes the sprawling Phoenix metropolitan area, has been labeled by supporters as “America’s toughest sheriff.” Unfortunately, he achieved that moniker by routinely violating the human rights of jail inmates and ignoring the constitutional protections of those he swore to protect. In recent years, the legend of “Sheriff Joe”— as he’s known locally — has taken a darker turn as he took it upon himself to enforce immigration laws, mainly by stopping and detaining Latinos merely because they were, well, Latino. That’s especially problematic in Maricopa County, where census figures put the Hispanic population at nearly 30 percent. Now, enough may finally be enough. Last Friday, the U.S. District Court in Phoenix issued an injunction to stop Arpaio’s office from detaining or arresting people based only on suspicion of being in the U.S. illegally without any evidence of criminal activity. The court also certified the four-year-old civil rights lawsuit, for which the ACLU is co-counsel, as a class action. This allows any Latino who has been stopped or detained by the sheriff’s office since 2007 (or anyone who might be in the future) to enforce the court order. The suit seeks to change how Arpaio enforces immigration laws and does not ask for monetary damages. “The district court ruled that the sheriff’s policy of detaining people merely based on a suspicion that they are in the U.S. unlawfully violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure,” said Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. It’s been a bad month for Arpaio and his minions who have tossed aside fundamental freedoms that don’t conform to their worldview. A federal Department of Justice report on Dec. 15 blasted Arpaio for running an office rife with systemic violations of civil rights, including a rampant pattern of racial profiling. Among other violations, an investigation found that as part of their “unconstitutional policing,” sheriff’s deputies were four to nine times more likely to pull over Latino drivers than non-Latinos. Deputies were also found to punish Latino inmates who did not understand commands in English. The court ruling led a group of Latino and political leaders in Phoenix yesterday to call for Arpaio’s resignation. It wasn’t the first time that demand has been made, but coupled with the DOJ’s scathing report, it is resonating more than ever. “If Sheriff Arpaio doesn’t change, he must step down,” Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox told the Arizona Republic. “We will not stand for racial profiling.” Learn more about racial profiling: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: Arizona, Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County, racial profiling
Stopping South Carolina from Sharing Alabama's FateThe fate of civil liberties in South Carolina will be decided by year’s end. Today, a coalition of South Carolinians and civil rights organizations went to federal district court in Charleston to stop the last anti-immigrant law passed this year. Like its shameful predecessors, Arizona’s SB 1070 and Alabama’s HB 56, South Carolina’s law would turn police officers and sheriff’s deputies into roving immigration agents who are authorized to demand papers from anyone they suspect of being an undocumented immigrant. If the federal court does not freeze this shameful law, South Carolina’s SB 20 will go into effect on New Year’s Day. No lawyer worth her salt dares to predict what a court will do, but it was clear that the judge was well prepared and took seriously the potential harms if the law were to go into effect. He referred to one section of the law as creating a “traffic dragnet” and pointed out that under South Carolina’s law, a torture victim who has applied for asylum could be arrested on the way to the grocery store, simply for not having a document that proves his right to be in this country. We’ve seen what happens when such a police regime swings into action. In Alabama, where a federal court permitted some similar provisions to go into effect, the state has been shamed by the high-profile arrests of lawfully present immigrants like a Mercedes-Benz executive. Immigrant families have fled the state in droves, taking the legislature’s cruel message that they are not welcome. As a result, schools have emptied, crops have rotted in the fields and construction sites are now silent. Our civil rights coalition and the U.S. Department of Justice are working through separate lawsuits to make sure this fate doesn’t befall South Carolina. Learn more about immigrants' rights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Tags: Alabama, immigrants' rights, South Carolina immigration law
Arizona's Notorious Sheriff Is Called out on Unconstitutional Police PracticesThe U.S. Department of Justice announced yesterday that after a three-year investigation, it found that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) has engaged in a pattern and practice of racial profiling against Latino residents. The Justice Department also found the office unlawfully retaliated against its critics, discriminated against Latinos held in its jails and failed to provide policing services to the county’s Latino residents. This comes as no surprise to anyone who lives in Maricopa County. For years, the MCSO has terrorized its own community with what the Justice Department’s expert called the most egregious case of racial profiling he has ever observed. As the ACLU discovered in its ongoing lawsuit against MCSO, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has forwarded racially charged and derogatory emails about Latinos to his senior staff. Those messages have been taken to heart by MCSO personnel. MCSO has improperly engaged in immigration enforcement and equated “illegal” with Latino. And who has paid the price? Latino residents – including countless U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants – whose civil rights have been violated. For example, ACLU clients Jessika and David Rodriguez, both U.S citizens, were stopped by MCSO deputies. While their two young children watched in fear from the back seat of the car, the Rodriguezes were pulled over for driving on a supposedly closed section of rural road. While MCSO deputies permitted several white drivers to drive on past their observation post, the deputies demanded to see Mr. Rodriguez’s social security card, after he had already produced his Arizona driver’s license. But it’s not only the Latino residents of Maricopa County who have paid the price for the sheriff’s illegal conduct. MCSO has failed to act on thousands of felony arrest warrants, and recent news stories have exposed MCSO’s utter failure to investigate incidents of rape and sexual assault. While the sheriff has been fixated on ferreting out “illegals” based on racial stereotypes, serious crimes have gone unaddressed in Maricopa County. The Justice Department’s report may be a huge step toward a new and long-awaited day in Maricopa County when everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, can drive down the street without fear of being required to prove their right to be here. Learn more about immigrants' rights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: Arizona, Arpaio, immigrants' rights, immigration discrimination, Maricopa County, racial profiling
One Too Many: New York Times Highlights American Citizens Detained Under S-Comm The New York Times today exposed a persistent problem with the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement programs: American citizens are being unlawfully detained for extended periods. In the report, the Times told the story of Antonio Montejano, an American citizen born in Los Angeles who was arrested while holiday shopping with his family, including his young children. “After his young daughter begged for a $10 bottle of cologne,” he inadvertently dropped it into a bag of items he had already purchased. When he left the store, he was arrested for shoplifting. Antonio should have been able to post bond quickly at the Santa Monica police station for a minor charge. Instead, he was held on an immigration detainer issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and transferred to the county jail despite a criminal court judge’s decision to let him go. He was not released until four days after his arrest. Antonio was detained because of the Obama administration’s Secure Communities program. He was flagged by the system because he was mistakenly deported to Mexico in 1996 and his records were not corrected. But as the Times report indicates, U.S. citizens have been detained based on all sorts of flaws in the department’s databases. “Unlike the federal criminal databases administered by the F.B.I., homeland security records include all immigration transactions, not just violations,” the article points out. “An immigrant who has always maintained legal status, including those who naturalized to become American citizens, can still trigger a fingerprint match.” ICE issues detainers based on this incorrect information and local law enforcement officials therefore hold people for up to 48 additional hours. Antonio said that despite his repeatedly telling police about his American citizenship, they did not believe him. ICE Director John Morton is quoted in the Times article as saying that all claims to U.S. citizenship receive “immediate and close attention.” That did not occur in Antonio’s case. “Just because I made one mistake,” Antonio said, “I don’t think they should have done all those things to me.” He thinks the police doubted his citizenship because of how he looks: “I look Mexican 100 percent.” Antonio is not alone. According to the Times, while there are no official statistics on the exact number of Americans held erroneously in immigration detention facilities, in one study 82 U.S. citizens were held from 2006 to 2008 at two immigration detention centers in Arizona, for periods as long as a year. But even just one U.S. citizen wrongly swept up by S-Comm is one too many. The ACLU has urged the Department of Homeland Security to stop Secure Communities across the country. In the News:
Spanish Media:
Learn more about Secure Communities: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: Antonio Montejano, Department of Homeland Security, immigration detention, John Morton, racial profiling, Secure Communities
New York Times Highlights Urgent Need to Protect Immigration Detainees from Sexual Abuse The New York Times in an editorial this morning highlights what increasingly is a poorly kept secret but which is no less disturbing nonetheless: the hundreds of thousands of immigration detainees caught in the far-reaching web of the nation’s punitive and inhumane immigration detention system are at grave risk of being sexually assaulted and abused. It is critical the Obama administration ensures that the bipartisan Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), unanimously passed in 2003 to set standards for preventing, detecting and responding to sexual abuse in prisons, applies to immigration detention facilities. The Department of Justice (DOJ) earlier this year proposed a rule that would explicitly exclude immigration detention centers, despite Congress’ clear intent that it should in fact cover immigration detainees. The Obama administration must not allow that proposed rule to stand, and we urge you to join us in calling on President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to make sure that immigration detainees, the vast majority of whom are being held on civil and not criminal charges, be protected under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. On Wednesday at 3 p.m. Congressmen Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Frank Wolf (R-Va.) are hosting a Hill Briefing on DOJ’s proposed rule implementing PREA. Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has gone on record touting what she says is her agency’s “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to the sexual abuse of immigration detainees. But as documents obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act show, whatever DHS is doing to combat this deeply disturbing problem is not nearly enough. According to the documents, some of which came from DHS’ own Office of the Inspector General, the sexual abuse of immigration detainees is a widespread systemic problem with allegations of assault and abuse being lodged at detention facilities from coast to coast. It is more than clear that this is a problem that is not limited to one rogue facility or merely the result of a handful of bad apple government contractors who staff some of the nation’s immigration detention centers. Indeed, despite the fact that the data in the documents surely represents just the very tip of the iceberg – sexual abuse is a widely underreported problem – the documents crystallize the urgent need for the government to admit just how pervasive a problem sexual abuse is in its immigration jails and take immediate steps to ensure that all detainees are protected. It is imperative that uniform protections, developed by a unanimous Congress and informed by the expertise of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, are in place to further the elimination of sexual abuse and assault in immigration detention. The current patchwork of unenforceable DHS standards is just not enough. Those standards fail to mandate that facilities allow for multiple routes to report sexual abuse; they lack sufficient provisions for confidential reporting and protection from retaliation; they lack requirements for proper criminal investigations of assaults and specialized post-assault training for investigators and medical staff; and they ignore the abusive use of administrative segregation in response to incidents of sexual abuse. Learn more about immigration detention: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: immigration detention, PREA, Prison Rape Elimination Act
Keep New York Out of S-Comm Editor’s Note: This is the last of five blogs in a series focusing on firsthand experiences with Secure Communities from across the country. In June 2011, New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo suspended our state’s involvement in the Obama administration’s Secure Communities (S-Comm) program, which targets immigrants for deportation, incentivizes racial profiling and sows mistrust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Governor Cuomo’s decision overturned an earlier one made by Governor David Paterson, who had quietly entered into an agreement with the federal government to authorize S-Comm. Paterson, like other governors across the nation, had been duped by the federal government and told that local jurisdictions would be able to opt in — or out — of the program. Unfortunately, after New York and two other states announced their opposition to the program, the Obama administration ignored their concerns, and declared that S-Comm will be mandatory in all states by 2013. New York should not be forced to participate in S-Comm’s misguided actions simply because the federal government refuses to recognize the program’s myriad harms. Even recent cosmetic changes to the deeply flawed program — the Obama administration’s nod to the concerns of advocates, elected officials and national law enforcement — do little to amend the wrongs S-Comm embodies. As the Cuomo administration stated in its letter to the Department of Homeland Security in June announcing the suspension of the program, “the heart of [our] concern is that the program, conceived of as a method of targeting those who pose the greatest threat to our communities, is in fact having the opposite effect and compromising public safety by deterring witnesses to crime and others from working with law enforcement.” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly called S-Comm “problematic,” citing the erosion of hard-won trust between communities and police. S-Comm has become a shortcut to deportation — for tens of thousands of people who have committed no crimes. The administration says it supports providing a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants; it makes no sense to subject many of the same individuals to deportation. Secure Communities, initially sold as a national-security measure, has yielded the opposite: Communities where people fear calling the police for help or to report a crime are less safe. And the program invites rampant racial profiling by encouraging the police to make pre-textual arrests in order to run checks on immigration status. The federal government misled New Yorkers about S-Comm. It should not continue to delude Americans into thinking that S-Comm is good for the nation. Our country’s ongoing participation in this misguided anti-immigrant dragnet threatens civil rights, wreaks havoc on fragile family structures, and weakens public safety instead of bolstering it. Learn more about Secure Communities: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: immigration discrimination, Secure Communities, Swept Up By S-Comm
California's Opt-Out: The Burden of S-Comm on U.S. Citizens in California Editor’s Note: This is the fourth of five blogs in a series focusing on firsthand experiences with Secure Communities from across the country. Most graduate students are known to spend nights in numerous places — libraries, cubicles and maybe even a party. But Perla Rodriguez, a graduate student and naturalized citizen, spent three nights in jail, with no reasonable explanation. “They just told me they wanted to make sure I was not undocumented, so while they investigated I had to remain in prison," Perla said. It all started on a mundane Friday evening when California Highway Patrol officers stopped Perla for making an incomplete stop. The officers asked where she was born and then arrested her for driving under the influence of alcohol. At the county jail, officers fingerprinted Perla, took a blood alcohol test and told her she would be released in a few hours. Soon those hours turned to days. “Those three nights and two days seemed eternal,” said Perla. “At one point I tried to sleep through the day to numb my nerves, yet sleep was hard to attain under that level of stress.” Perla was told that she could not be released due to an ICE hold that was triggered under the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities (S-Comm) program. Perla’s sister presented her U.S. passport to the jail officials two times that weekend but the officers refused to release her. Finally, Perla’s sister spoke to an ICE officer Monday afternoon who said that the new DHS fingerprinting system showed her status as “pending.” Upon presentation of Perla’s passport to the ICE officer, Perla was released — nearly three days after she would have been released from the traffic-released arrest. The California Department of Motor Vehicles returned her license a few weeks later, indicating that she had been driving within the legal blood-alcohol limit. Perla never committed a crime. And she is a U.S. citizen. Yet she was taken in unlawfully and forced to prove her citizenship. And sadly, she’s not alone in facing this experience since S-Comm went into effect. Perla’s story is just one of many shared at a hearing on California’s TRUST Act, a bill authored by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano that would allow local jurisdictions to opt out of S-Comm and provide protections for crime victims. These stories led more than 70 organizations, law enforcement individuals and cities to support the legislation. The California Assembly and Senate Public Safety Committee passed the bill out in 2011 and the bill will continue its journey when the legislature resumes this January. If local jurisdictions gain the ability to opt out of S-Comm under the TRUST Act, it will go a long way. In the two-year period from October 2008 until September 2011, more than 55,233 individuals were deported from California under S-Comm, despite the fact that more than 70 percent had not committed serious crimes. And because California has more foreign born residents than any other state, many Californians are affected by S-Comm’s errors. In 2008, almost 30 percent of California’s 37 million residents were foreign born. After Perla’s incident, her county sheriff, Ed Prieto, supported the TRUST Act and lobbied to opt Yolo County out of S-Comm but DHS has so far refused these requests. Let’s just hope we don’t need similar incidents in every county before other law enforcement officials take a similar stand. UPDATE: This post has been amended to add the author of the TRUST Act, Assembly Member Tom Ammiano. Learn more about Secure Communities: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: immigration discrimination, Secure Communities, Swept Up By S-Comm
ICE's Mess in Massachusetts Editor’s Note: This is the third of five blogs in a series focusing on firsthand experiences with Secure Communities from across the country. Over the last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has played out a miniature version of its catastrophic national strategy on Secure Communities in my home state of Massachusetts. Complete with misrepresentations, betrayals, last-minute visits by heads of departments, heated letters and a barrage of media stories, ICE’s plan to roll out this program in the Bay State has been nothing short of a disaster. In Massachusetts, ICE proved to be an untrustworthy partner and has lost any legitimacy it may once have had. Here are the misrepresentations ICE told to our state:
If ICE won’t make a change, it’s time for Congress to take control back from this rogue agency. Millions of our taxpayer dollars are going to fund a program that, in the end, serves only to hurt communities. In Massachusetts, we will continue to fight this divisive and damaging program until the very end and we stand behind the other cities and states that do the same. Learn more about Secure Communities: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: immigrants' rights, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Massachusetts, Secure Communities, Swept Up By S-Comm |
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