ACLU Claims U.S. is Illegally Detaining U.S. Citizens
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
The ACLU announced on Tuesday that based on recent findings spanning over a period of a dozen years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials issued to Rhode Island Department of Corrections' administrators 462 "immigration detainers" against individuals identified in the ACI's computer system as U.S. Citizens.
The findings come from facts that were disclosed in briefs filed on Friday by the ACLU in its lawsuit on behalf of Ada Morales, a North Providence resident who has twice been the target of immigration detainers as a deportable "alien," though she is a U.S. Ciitizen.
Click here for a copy of the brief filed on Friday
Other facts disclosed in the ACLU brief include that the immigration official responsible for issuing the detainer against Morales didn't run her Social Security Number through a database that would have confirmed her citizenship status, and the former field director of ICE's regional office acknowledged that "an ICE agent does not have to make a determination that a person is in the country illegally before issuing a detainer."
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIn February of 2014, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. ruled that there are critical constitutional limits on the power of immigration and corrections officials to detain people while investigating their immigration status.
In July of 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld that ruling. The briefs filed by the ACLU on Friday ask the court to reject all remaining arguments that ICE and the DOC have raised in an effort to avoid liability for their illegal detention on Morales.
No date is set on when the judge will rule on the ACLU's motion.
Ada Morales
In May of 2009, Morales, born in Guatemala and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1995, was taken into custody on unrelated criminal charges. While being held at the ACI, an ICE "immigration detainer" was issued against her. Though a judge ordered Morales release, the R.I. Department of Corrections held her in custody for an additional 24 hours due to the ICE detainer.
“I told the Rhode Island officials that I’m a U.S. citizen, and I offered to show them my naturalization certificate and passport, but no one would listen. They just assumed they could hold me because of my Guatemalan background and the color of my skin,” Ms. Morales said.
An ICE official apologized to Ms. Morales for her wrongful detention, but acknowledged that it could happen again. In fact, she had been unlawfully detained in similar circumstances once before, in 2004.
ICE Detainer
An ICE detainer is a document that requests that state or law enforcement officials to detain a person to give ICE extra time to take the person into federal custody for deportation purposes once state or local custody ends.
ICE Agents and state and local officials treat a detainer as authorizing continued imprisonment, even if no state or federal charges are pending and no deportation proceedings have been brought.
Other related documents regarding the case can be found here.
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