ACLU sues over Florida detainee
Sanctuary policy of Trump faulted
MIAMI — Miami-Dade County is violating the U.S. Constitution by detaining people without a warrant to comply with President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday in a federal lawsuit.
The ACLU and other attorneys filed the lawsuit in Miami on behalf of a Honduran-born U.S. citizen who was held in jail without charges because an immigration officer had requested deportation proceedings.
Miami-Dade County, where more than half the population is foreign-born, became the only large jurisdiction to give in to Trump’s immigration order punishing so-called sanctuary cities for shielding residents from federal immigration authorities.
Cities in California, Massachusetts and Washington have challenged Trump’s executive order in court, and a federal judge blocked it in April, at least temporarily.
Garland Creedle was arrested March 12 in a domestic-violence case and was due to be released March 13 on bail.
The 18-year-old was held an additional night on the “detainer” request before being released March 14 — apparently after immigration authorities confirmed his citizenship.
Although Creedle is a U.S. citizen, attorneys behind the lawsuit argue that anyone held beyond the closing of a criminal case on an immigration detainer is being “unlawfully detained.”
“The fact that he is a U.S. citizen and is held under these detainers is important because it shows that the probable-cause determination on the detainers form does not pass constitutional muster,” said Rebecca Sharpless, an attorney for Creedle and director of the University of Miami law’s immigration clinic. “If you are a U.S. citizen and a detainer is issued to determine there is probable cause to deport you — that is wrong.”
The complaint says the county is in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable arrests. The lawsuit also says Florida law prohibits jail officials from detaining people for civil immigration purposes.
Nestor Yglesias, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami, said the agency could not comment on Creedle’s case because of the pending litigation.
But he said agency officers were trained on how to meet the standard of probable cause.
A 2013 county resolution established that Miami-Dade law enforcement officers would comply with federal immigration officials only in cases of serious charges or convictions or when the federal government agreed to reimburse the county for holding an offender.
But on Jan. 26, a day after Trump announced he would strip federal funding from sanctuary areas, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez sent a memo instructing the corrections director to honor all immigration detainer requests.
The lawsuit names Gimenez and the county as defendants and seeks an undisclosed amount of compensation and the reversal of the county’s policy on holding people for immigration authorities. A county spokesman said the mayor will not comment on the lawsuit.