The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy
United States Senate
Washington, DC 200510
Re: Immigrant Fairness Restoration Act of 2001
Dear Senator Kennedy:
The American Civil Liberties Union is pleased to join with a vast array of civil rights, religious, immigrants' rights and labor organizations in enthusiastically endorsing the Immigrant Fairness Restoration Act of 2001. We welcome your leadership in authoring this critical legislation. It would restore judicial review of immigration officials' decisions, end the practice of mandatory detention and life-long detention of non-citizens who have already served criminal sentences, and make sure that immigration laws do not change the rules in the middle of the game.
The United States is a nation of laws. In our system of checks and balances, judicial review is an essential tool for preserving liberty. Anti-terrorism and immigration laws passed in 1996 eliminated that guarantee for many non-citizens in this country. Stripping courts of the power to review immigration decisions gives the INS unchecked power to "say what the law is" -- power that our Constitution vests in an independent judiciary. INS employees can be the only officials that will ever hear an immigration case. That cannot be due process.
The bill would also fix two of the most serious problems with current law by ending mandatory detention and life-long detention, perhaps the most flagrant, unfair deprivations of liberty possible. Life-long detention is the extraordinary and abusive practice of indefinitely detaining non-citizens who have been ordered deported but whom the INS is unable to remove. These individuals have already served their sentences as provided by state and federal criminal laws, but, because of political circumstances outside their control, face what amounts to an additional life sentence. For non-citizens whose immigration cases are pending, your bill would end mandatory detention. Immigration officials would have the discretion they once had to release those non-citizens who are not a danger to society and who are likely to appear for future proceedings.
Lastly, the bill would ensure that changes to immigration laws that result in more serious consequences would not be applied retroactively. Currently, immigration officials are applying new, more expansive definitions of deportable offenses even to those whose offenses would not have led to automatic deportation at the time they were committed. Particularly unfair is the application of these new definitions to individuals who entered pleas of guilty or "no contest" to charges on a lawyer's advice that such pleas would not lead to automatic deportation.
Immigration officials are applying these definitions retroactively even though Congress never said they should. Your bill would clarify Congress's intent not to change the rules in the middle of the game.
Deportation of long-term residents is the practical equivalent of a sentence of exile from their homes, families and communities and therefore, as the Supreme Court has recognized, may "result in the loss of all that makes life worth living." Due process is the minimum guarantee that such decisions will be made accurately and fairly.
Congress must act now to provide due process and ensure fairness for all on American soil.
Sincerely,
Laura W. Murphy
Director, Washington National Office
Timothy H. Edgar
Legislative Counsel