ICE ‘needlessly cruel’
Even disabled people don’t get a break on release: suit
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has all but eliminated bond or release for people awaiting immigration hearings — cruelly separating them from their families even when they pose no risk of danger or flight, according to a new lawsuit.
Even detainees with physical disabilities or mental health problems have suffered under the “no release” policy, as evidenced by the six people, including two suicide victims, who died in less than a year at the Hudson County Jail in Kearny, N.J., where many awaiting hearings are detained, the lawsuit said.
“ICE’s policy of detaining nearly everyone it arrests is yet another effort to intimidate immigrant communities and coerce our clients into surrendering their rights,” said Thomas Scott-Railton, an Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow at the impact litigation practice of the Bronx Defenders.
“This practice of widespread detention is both cruel and needless, and has particularly devastating consequences for people with physical or psychological disabilities who must fight their immigration cases while being held in inhumane conditions and without access to the health services they need.”
The Bronx Defenders, in the federal class-action lawsuit with the New York Civil Liberties Union, claims ICE’s policy violates the due process rights of those being detained and federal law protecting individuals with disabilities.
The lawsuit, announced
Monday, says ICE’s New York City office must determine release based on individualized assessments.
An ICE spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
According to the NYCLU, ICE’s release policy changed dramatically shortly after President Trump took office in 2017.
From 2013 to June 2017, 47% of detainees deemed to be low risk by the government were granted release, the lawsuit said. From June 2017 to September 2019, that figure plummeted to 3%.
“ICE has secretly decided to detain thousands of New Yorkers unlawfully, inflicting enormous and entirely unnecessary harms,” said Amy Belsher, an NYCLU attorney and the lawsuit’s lead counsel. “ICE is legally required to make individual assessments and cannot outsource its statutory and constitutional duties to a rigged algorithm.”
The NYCLU uncovered the practice as the result of a Freedom of Information law request it submitted to ICE. ICE denied the request, and only shared the data after the agency was sued in federal court.