Deportation ‘traps’ used by feds, says ACLU
BOSTON — Federal immigration agencies have launched a coordinated campaign to arrest and deport immigrants seeking to become legal U.S. residents through marriage, according to documents released this week in a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The documents show the extent to which officials for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have been coordinating with their counterparts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement to facilitate arrests at citizenship offices in New England.
The ACLU criticizes the efforts as a deportation “trap” that violates the constitutional rights of immigrants otherwise following the rules to become legal residents.
“The government created this path for them to seek a green card,” Matthew Segal, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts, said Tuesday. “The government can’t create that path and then arrest folks for following that path.”
The ACLU lawsuit argues that Homeland Security regulations created under former President Barack Obama allow immigrants with U.S.-citizen spouses to stay in the country while they seek a green card.
The ACLU’s legal brief is the latest in the class-action suit it filed earlier this year on behalf of immigrants who have been or fear being separated from their U.S.-citizen spouses.
The case will be argued Aug. 20 in Boston federal court and names five couples, including lead plaintiffs Lilian Calderon and Luis Gordillo of Rhode Island.
Gordillo is a U.S. citizen, but Calderon is a native of Guatemala who came to the country with her family at the age of 3. She was ordered to leave in 2002 after her father was denied asylum.
The 30-year-old mother of two was detained by ICE in January after she and her husband attended an interview at the USCIS office in Johnston, R.I., to confirm their marriage.
Calderon was released in February after the ACLU challenged the detention.