Imagine that you are a lawful resident married to a U.S. citizen serviceman who is deployed overseas, and you are looking for a job to help support your family. You find one, but unbeknownst to you, your employer, aiming to expedite the hiring process, checks the "citizen" box on the application, a box that you correctly left blank. After audit, you are accused of making a false statement of citizenship status, which could provide grounds for mandatory deportation. Imagine that the allegation is never substantiated and you are never given the opportunity to explain the circumstances, but you are banished from the U.S. and from your family. Well – you don't have to imagine all this since it's a true account shared by Margaret D. Stock, Lt. Col. (Ret.) and counsel at Lane Powell, at a congressional briefing organized last month by the ACLU. Her client was forced to return to her country of origin and separated from her husband while he put his life on the line for the freedoms we enjoy.
By Dan Zeidman, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:51pm
Over the last 30 years, the population of the federal prison system has increased exponentially – nearly 800 percent – largely due to the overrepresentation of those convicted of drug offenses, many of whom are low-level and non-violent. Today, a record 218,000 people are confined within Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) operated facilities or in privately managed or community-based institutions and jails.
By Patrick DePoy, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:33pm
Recently, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Constitution Subcommittee held a landmark hearing on solitary confinement. The goal of the hearing was to comprehensively examine and reassess the overuse of solitary confinement in federal and state correctional facilities and detention centers. Sen. Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the subcommittee, noted the hearing was about more than just solitary confinement, instead seeking to answer the question, “What do America’s prisons say about our nation and its values?”
By Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project at 12:05pm
Last Thursday’s release of the long-delayed national Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) regulations by the Department of Justice reminds us of the hundreds of prison rape victims we’ve heard from over the years who could not seek justice because the prison officials who failed to protect them were essentially immunized from liability by a 1996 federal law, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The announced purpose of the PLRA was to curb the filing of frivolous litigation by prisoners. In reality, the law makes it
Yesterday the Department of Justice (DOJ) released the long-awaited National Standards to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison Rape. These standards – the first of their kind—create an historic opportunity to put an end to the epidemic of sexual abuse in prison, which disproportionately affects prisoners who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or have intersex conditions (LGBTI).
In 2009, Claudia Leiva Deras, a domestic violence survivor who is now a lawful U.S. resident, was held in immigration detention at the Cass County Jail in Plattsmouth, Neb. While Claudia waited there for the outcome of her immigration hearing, she faced months of brutality at the hands of a fellow detainee. Claudia was hit, kicked and choked daily. She was also sexually assaulted and left bleeding, with no one to turn to for help.
By Joanne Lin, Washington Legislative Office at 3:02pm
Excluding immigration detention from prison rape standards that prevent, detect and respond to sexual assault in custody is unjustifiable and unconscionable.
