SC to examine lengthy immigrant ‘detentions’
Travel ban suits filed
WASHINGTON, Oct 3, (Agencies): The Supreme Court was set to examine Tuesday whether thousands of migrants subjected to lengthy detentions in immigration centers should have a right to a bond hearing.
The case already appeared in the US high court in November 2016, but the eight justices — presumably deadlocked — chose to defer hearing it until the current session, with the bench back at nine following the appointment of conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Those challenging deportation after being arrested on the American border, or those arrested for a possibly deportable offense who choose to fight to stay, currently spend months or even years in detention.
It’s a situation considered unacceptable by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which supports a class action launched by Mexican Alejandro Rodriguez and other immigrants.
“It is amazing that for a citizen who is arrested for committing a crime gets a hearing within 48 hours, at which if, the government can’t demonstrate that this person affirmably poses a risk of flight or a danger to the community, he is out,” said David Cole, ACLU National Legal Director.
“Yet for a foreigner, who has committed no crime, we detain them for six months without any hearing whatsoever.”
Having arrived in the United States at a young age, Rodriguez was granted legal residence and worked as a dental assistant. But after he was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle and drug possession, authorities began deportation proceedings.
He spent over three years behind bars pending completion of removal proceedings, and was finally released after the ACLU filed a lawsuit. Rodriguez eventually won his fight to stay in the United States, according to the ACLU. Asylum seekers face the same problem, among them Ahilan Nadarajah, who faced torture in his home country of Sri Lanka.
When he claimed asylum in 2001, authorities placed him in detention for four years and five months, his applications for release rejected time and time again. Eventually, he obtained American citizenship.
Gorsuch
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A coalition of Muslim and Iranian-American advocates and a nonpartisan legal institute filed the first lawsuits against the Trump administration’s new travel restrictions for citizens of eight countries, including Iran, that were announced late last month.
The lawsuits were filed Monday in federal courts in New York and Maryland.
The Trump administration in September announced the most recent restrictions, which affect citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen — and some Venezuelan government officials and their families. They are to go into effect Oct 18.
One lawsuit, filed Monday night in US District Court for the Southern District of Maryland on behalf of the Iranian Alliance Across Borders and six individuals, argues that restricting travel for citizens of predominantly Muslim countries violates the US Constitution.
“Iranian Americans, and other affected communities, have had to familiarize themselves with ambiguous new laws and policies every few months because of this president’s obsession with fulfilling a flawed campaign promise to ban Muslims from the United States. This erosion of fundamental American values must stop,” said Shayan Modarres, legal counsel for the National Iranian American Council, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit.