Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing entitled "Building an Immigration System Worthy of American Values," where I will testify. The hearing will address how our immigration system currently fails to live up to our Constitution because it does not ensure the due process right to a fair day in court before locking someone away for months in an immigration prison or permanently banishing them from our country. Furthermore, although immigration law is formally termed as "civil," this is legal fiction; in reality, it has the hallmark harshness of the criminal justice system. The outcomes of this system are often devastating, not only for the immigrants themselves, but also for their families.
In a front-page story published in today’s USA Today, the results of our investigation of the comingling of local law enforcement agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) in the southeast were made public. During a “seatbelt” checkpoint conducted last May by the Jackson County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Office, ICE implemented one of its many initiatives to ensure that the number of criminal deportations achieved the prior year’s level. In simpler terms: a quota.
By Kate Desormeau, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 2:07pm
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims that its recently announced new policy on immigration detainers is a major step toward “smarter immigration enforcement,” and it seems to have convinced some editorialboards that that’s true. But serious problems remain.
As families get together this holiday season, we thought we’d share one wish for the New Year: an end to a government policy that tears thousands of these families apart.
We’re talking about the Obama administration’s harsh immigration enforcement regime, which has led to more than 200,000 parents of U.S. citizen children deported in just the last two years.
On Monday, “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on MSNBC featured an interview with former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, and the discussion turned to immigration. Matthews asked Crist about his views on immigration enforcement and said that part of being a Democrat (Crist’s new political party) is being weak on enforcement.
Today, a federal court in South Carolina upheld most of its original order blocking key provisions of South Carolina’s anti-immigrant law from going into effect. The court’s ruling today makes it clear that states like South Carolina cannot independently criminalize the act of transporting or harboring certain immigrants, or the failure to carry federal immigration papers. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. United States, however, the court modified its original decision to block the law’s “show me your papers” provision. But today’s decision clearly states that the law does not allow South Carolina officers to detain individuals solely to verify their immigration status.
By Esha Bhandari, Equal Justice Works Fellow, ACLU at 12:15pm
Mark Lyttle, an American citizen with mental disabilities who was wrongfully detained and deported to Mexico and forced to live on the streets and in prisons for months, settled his case against the federal government this week.
Lyttle will receive $175,000 for the suffering he endured after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who deported him despite ample evidence that he was a U.S. citizen. The settlement comes after a federal district court in Georgia ruled in Lyttle’s favor in March, holding that the bulk of his claims against the federal defendants should not be dismissed.
By Ian S. Thompson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Joanne Lin, Washington Legislative Office at 1:57pm
In August, over 80 members of Congress, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), wrote to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requesting recognition, explicitly and in writing, of the ties of a same-sex partner or spouse as a positive factor for determining discretionary relief in immigration cases. On Friday, it was reported that DHS had announced it would be issuing new, written guidance providing that relief to LGBT immigrant families.
By Michael Tan, Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights Project, ACLU at 2:12pm
Alejandro Rodriguez’s parents brought him from Mexico when he was a baby. Prior to his detention, Alejandro earned his green card and lived near his extended family in Los Angeles, working as a dental assistant to support his two U.S. citizen children. The two convictions that gave rise to his detention and deportation case were minor and non-violent— joyriding when he was 19, and a misdemeanor drug possession when he was 24. Alejandro posed no flight risk or danger to the community and yet, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) locked Alejandro up for more than three years without a bond hearing. Bond hearings are a basic and guaranteed principle of due process in the American judicial system, but thousands of immigrants like Alejandro are denied this fundamental right on a daily basis.
By Abdi Soltani, ACLU of Northern California at 2:58pm
What do anti-immigrant laws have to do with children and youth?
In my 8-year-old son Cyrus's Spanish immersion program at a Berkeley public school, there are families facing deportation. The teacher taught a class on it and the children wrote letters to President Obama, in Cyrus' words, "to keep families together."
So when I told Cyrus I was going on a long road trip to fight discriminatory anti-immigrant laws, he said "Do it, Baba." And with his vote of approval, off I went.
