American Civil Liberties Union

Today Maryland and Oregon are celebrating the signing of new laws expanding access to driver's licenses to all residents, including undocumented immigrants. We are part of a movement. Our hope is that our success inspires the passage of bills in more than a dozen other states considering similar measures.

In most states today, it is difficult, if not impossible, for people to go about their daily lives without the ability to drive. Simple but essential tasks such as driving kids to school or to extracurricular activities, picking up groceries, going to the doctor, and traveling to workbecome riddled with hardship. As a result, people without access to driver's licenses are faced with the difficult "choice" of either not meeting their basic needs or driving and risking arrest and other negative repercussions.

In a landmark ruling yesterday, Federal District Judge Dolly M. Gee ordered the federal government to provide legal representation for immigrant detainees in California, Arizona and Washington who have serious mental disabilities and are unable to represent themselves in immigration court. This is a historic decision — it is the first ever to recognize a right to appointed counsel in immigration proceedings for a group of immigrants. Unlike the criminal justice system, where judges are generally required to appoint counsel for defendants who cannot afford a lawyer, there are no safeguards in the immigration enforcement system to ensure the basic fairness of having legal representation for immigrants. As a result, over half of all individuals in immigration court — including 84% of detained individuals — must face the complex legal proceedings alone and unrepresented, while the government is always represented by a lawyer.

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a landmark ruling that curtails one of the most wasteful and draconian features of our immigration lock-up system: the government's practice of putting immigration detainees behind bars for months or even years, without ever holding a bond hearing to determine if they should be locked up in the first place. In Rodriguez v. Robbins, a class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Court upheld an order requiring bond hearings for detainees locked up six months or longer while they fight their deportation cases. The ruling stands to benefit thousands of immigration detainees across the Ninth Circuit, where an estimated 25% of immigrant detainees are held every year.

The ACLU welcomed the bill summary released late last night by a bipartisan group of key senators – ‘the Gang of 8', and we eagerly await the introduction of complete bill text, expected later today.

For over 90 years the ACLU has defended the rights of all Americans, whether born in this country or somewhere else, because the Constitution protects the civil liberties and civil rights of all people. We will continue to serve in this critical role as the debate over the immigration reform bill begins. Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said: