Watch the journey of two separated parents trying to cross the border and reunite with their children.
In October, the Trump administration admitted that in a 12-month period, beginning in July 2017, it separated 4,370 immigrant children from their parents at the border. Since then, over 1,000 more have been separated under a dubious loophole that allows the government to take children away from their parents if they have a criminal record or are suspected of fraud.
Hundreds of parents were deported to their home countries without their children, with no clear plan to reunify them. Given the impossible choice of having those children returned to dangerous situations or allowing them to stay in the safety of the U.S. to pursue asylum claims, many parents faced the prospect of never seeing their kids again. Along with a group of partner organizations, in 2018 the ACLU set out to find those parents and help them reunite with their children.
“Maria” was separated from her teenage daughter on Christmas Day in 2017. In this short documentary, watch her and another parent, Nery, as they travel to the border to try and make an asylum claim and see their children again. And read more about them here.
Published November 27, 2019 at 03:15PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2XW9tMj
Watch the journey of two separated parents trying to cross the border and reunite with their children.
In October, the Trump administration admitted that in a 12-month period, beginning in July 2017, it separated 4,370 immigrant children from their parents at the border. Since then, over 1,000 more have been separated under a dubious loophole that allows the government to take children away from their parents if they have a criminal record or are suspected of fraud.
Hundreds of parents were deported to their home countries without their children, with no clear plan to reunify them. Given the impossible choice of having those children returned to dangerous situations or allowing them to stay in the safety of the U.S. to pursue asylum claims, many parents faced the prospect of never seeing their kids again. Along with a group of partner organizations, in 2018 the ACLU set out to find those parents and help them reunite with their children.
“Maria” was separated from her teenage daughter on Christmas Day in 2017. In this short documentary, watch her and another parent, Nery, as they travel to the border to try and make an asylum claim and see their children again. And read more about them here.
Published November 27, 2019 at 08:45PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2XW9tMj
Hong Kong’s High Court ruled Monday that a government ban on protesters wearing face masks was unconstitutional. The mask ban has become a flashpoint in the movement to defend democracy there, and is part of a growing battle between high-tech surveillance and evasion of such surveillance. Demonstrators have not only worn masks but also used umbrellas to shield themselves from surveillance cameras, destroyed CCTV cameras and “smart lamp posts,” and used lasers to neutralize them.
What many people do not realize is that a number of American states and cities alsoban the wearing of face masks during protests. And in the United States, as in Hong Kong, the issue is likely to grow in significance due to the increasing prevalence of new surveillance technologies, especially surveillance cameras and face recognition.
Some of our anti-mask laws date back to the 19th century. A New York State law, for example, was originally enacted in 1845 to quash a sometimes violent rebellion by tenant farmers who dressed up as Native Americans to hide their faces. Some state laws apply narrowly (such as only during the commission of a crime) and others quite broadly. They typically include exceptions such as for holiday costumes, masquerade parties, sports and entertainment events, physical safety, protection from the cold, and religious beliefs.
Court challenges to American anti-mask laws have met with mixed success. A California law was struck down by state courts in 1979 in a challenge from Iranian-Americans who argued that it exposed them to retaliation by the Iranian government. Other courts have ruled that such laws are constitutional, most significantly the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which upheld New York’s law in a case involving the Ku Klux Klan.
In fact, the KKK has been central to the history of mask laws in the United States, and that understandably complicates the issue for many people. A number of southern states, including Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, enacted mask bans in the late 1940s and early 1950s to repress the Klan. The political leaders in those states were acting not to help the Klan’s targets, but because they wanted to defend segregation as part of a “modern South” and felt that violent racist terrorism was making them look bad.
The political and technological contexts in which these laws are being applied are changing, however. Anti-mask laws today are being deployed more often against progressive protesters than Klansmen, and in ways that raise questions about selective prosecution.
New York State’s law was used to arrest Occupy Wall Street protesters, for example. In Alabama, police cited that state’s anti-KKK law to force people to remove their masks while protesting an April 2017 speech by a white supremacist. Alabama’s law was also used to arrest the organizer of a November 2018 protest over the fatal shooting of a Black man. In Virginia, several college students were arrested on felony charges and initially faced prison time for covering their faces while protesting a pro-Confederate rally. A legislator in Arizona proposed an anti-mask law, declaring that anti-Trump and Black Lives Matter protesters who damaged property were “absolutely” the “equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan.” (“Now, there are no hangings of white people, yet,” he added.)
At the ACLU, we continue to get queries from protesters and even from street performers dressed as superheroes who have been cited or threatened under a mask ordinance. But it’s the spread of facial recognition that is likely to raise the stakes around anti-mask laws the most. The more accurate and widespread the technology becomes, the more situations will arise where people won’t want to show their faces. The cameras that increasingly surround us will allow the police to cheaply and easily identify us — and who we’re with, even if part of a giant crowd.
It gets even worse when we realize that we can be identified that way repeatedly, with our presence recorded in databases and automated algorithms used to flag repeat protest activity, associational patterns, or anything else the authorities might want to know.
And of course it’s not just the authorities who can use face recognition. Even if we restrict its use by government, private parties who have access to photographs of a controversial event will be able to use them to identify us and harass us, retaliate against us at work, or worse.
If we allow government face recognition to continue to spread, the American context will increasingly resemble what we see in Hong Kong today: a struggle for power centered around who can observe and who can be observed. American laws should allow people the freedom to cover up their faces in protests or anywhere else. If necessary, rules should only target uses of masks that are intended to facilitate commission of a crime. We must maintain the freedom to publicly express ourselves while protecting our privacy, in a world increasingly designed to take it away from us.
Published November 27, 2019 at 03:49AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2OnTZ0I
Hong Kong’s High Court ruled Monday that a government ban on protesters wearing face masks was unconstitutional. The mask ban has become a flashpoint in the movement to defend democracy there, and is part of a growing battle between high-tech surveillance and evasion of such surveillance. Demonstrators have not only worn masks but also used umbrellas to shield themselves from surveillance cameras, destroyed CCTV cameras and “smart lamp posts,” and used lasers to neutralize them.
What many people do not realize is that a number of American states and cities alsoban the wearing of face masks during protests. And in the United States, as in Hong Kong, the issue is likely to grow in significance due to the increasing prevalence of new surveillance technologies, especially surveillance cameras and face recognition.
Some of our anti-mask laws date back to the 19th century. A New York State law, for example, was originally enacted in 1845 to quash a sometimes violent rebellion by tenant farmers who dressed up as Native Americans to hide their faces. Some state laws apply narrowly (such as only during the commission of a crime) and others quite broadly. They typically include exceptions such as for holiday costumes, masquerade parties, sports and entertainment events, physical safety, protection from the cold, and religious beliefs.
Court challenges to American anti-mask laws have met with mixed success. A California law was struck down by state courts in 1979 in a challenge from Iranian-Americans who argued that it exposed them to retaliation by the Iranian government. Other courts have ruled that such laws are constitutional, most significantly the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which upheld New York’s law in a case involving the Ku Klux Klan.
In fact, the KKK has been central to the history of mask laws in the United States, and that understandably complicates the issue for many people. A number of southern states, including Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, enacted mask bans in the late 1940s and early 1950s to repress the Klan. The political leaders in those states were acting not to help the Klan’s targets, but because they wanted to defend segregation as part of a “modern South” and felt that violent racist terrorism was making them look bad.
The political and technological contexts in which these laws are being applied are changing, however. Anti-mask laws today are being deployed more often against progressive protesters than Klansmen, and in ways that raise questions about selective prosecution.
New York State’s law was used to arrest Occupy Wall Street protesters, for example. In Alabama, police cited that state’s anti-KKK law to force people to remove their masks while protesting an April 2017 speech by a white supremacist. Alabama’s law was also used to arrest the organizer of a November 2018 protest over the fatal shooting of a Black man. In Virginia, several college students were arrested on felony charges and initially faced prison time for covering their faces while protesting a pro-Confederate rally. A legislator in Arizona proposed an anti-mask law, declaring that anti-Trump and Black Lives Matter protesters who damaged property were “absolutely” the “equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan.” (“Now, there are no hangings of white people, yet,” he added.)
At the ACLU, we continue to get queries from protesters and even from street performers dressed as superheroes who have been cited or threatened under a mask ordinance. But it’s the spread of facial recognition that is likely to raise the stakes around anti-mask laws the most. The more accurate and widespread the technology becomes, the more situations will arise where people won’t want to show their faces. The cameras that increasingly surround us will allow the police to cheaply and easily identify us — and who we’re with, even if part of a giant crowd.
It gets even worse when we realize that we can be identified that way repeatedly, with our presence recorded in databases and automated algorithms used to flag repeat protest activity, associational patterns, or anything else the authorities might want to know.
And of course it’s not just the authorities who can use face recognition. Even if we restrict its use by government, private parties who have access to photographs of a controversial event will be able to use them to identify us and harass us, retaliate against us at work, or worse.
If we allow government face recognition to continue to spread, the American context will increasingly resemble what we see in Hong Kong today: a struggle for power centered around who can observe and who can be observed. American laws should allow people the freedom to cover up their faces in protests or anywhere else. If necessary, rules should only target uses of masks that are intended to facilitate commission of a crime. We must maintain the freedom to publicly express ourselves while protecting our privacy, in a world increasingly designed to take it away from us.
Published November 26, 2019 at 10:19PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2OnTZ0I
Thanksgiving is here: that time of year when we pause to take stock of all we’re grateful for. At the ACLU, we’re saying thanks for all the crucial wins from our legal teams — and for the Constitution.
In just the last few months, we’ve racked up many essential victories in the ongoing battle to protect civil liberties and civil rights. The scope of these victories is breathtaking: they span criminal justice, privacy, religious freedom, reproductive rights, due process for immigrants, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and the right to protest the Keystone pipeline, among others. We’ve won crucial victories over those who would, absent our resistance, sacrifice liberty and rights to some other ends. For all of these wins, we are deeply grateful.
Immigrants’ Rights
Preserving due process for immigrants. We obtained a court order blocking President Trump’s vast expansion of “expedited removal,” a summary deportation process that denies immigrants core procedural protections and eliminates virtually all appeals. We also won a temporary injunction requiring the government to afford access to lawyers for immigrants facing forcible return to Mexico who fear persecution there.
Reproductive Freedom
Beating back state abortion bans. Our team won a preliminary injunction against Georgia’s law banning abortion, and another injunction against Alabama’s near-total ban on abortions. After seven states moved to introduce abortion bans earlier this year, we blocked five of the seven bans in court as unconstitutional, while our ally in this fight, the Center for Reproductive Rights, blocked the other two. In addition, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld our injunction against an Ohio law prohibiting abortions based on the patient’s reason.
Protecting your health care. A federal judge in New York blocked President Trump’s so-called “conscience rule,” which would have allowed doctors, nurses, and other health care providers nationwide to place their own views over the needs of their patience and refuse to provide health care to which they object on moral or religious grounds. The court held that the rule was arbitrary and rested on demonstrably false assertions by the administration.
Racial Justice
Tackling racial profiling in Mississippi. In Brown v. Madison County, we reached a groundbreaking settlement with the Madison County Sheriff’s Department to end racially-biased police practices. In 2017, we sued the department over its systemic targeting of black people for illegal — and often violent — searches and seizures. According to the settlement, the sheriff’s department must train deputies on proper practices and collect data on checkpoints and pedestrian stops that will be verified by a Community Oversight Board and plaintiffs’ attorneys. This is one of the first consent decrees in Mississippi to address racialized policing.
Transgender Justice
Challenging the refusal to amend birth certificates to accurately report gender. Ohio is one of three states that refuse to update the gender marker on birth certificates for people who have transitioned to live their true gender. A federal district court ruling affirmed our equal protection and free speech claims.
Voting Rights
Fighting the 21st century poll tax. In Florida, a state court blocked the requirement that returning citizens in Florida repay all fines, restitution, and fees associated with their sentences before regaining their voting rights. The court ruled that Florida must establish a process where people who cannot afford to pay their legal financial obligations can still regain their voting rights. This victory helps keep our Amendment 4 ballot referendum victory in place.
Safeguarding voter access. In Tennessee, a court blocked restrictions on voter registration drives, including draconian fines and criminal sanctions. In Missouri, we successfully challenged the state’s failure to provide voter registration services to people who update their driver’s license address online — an omission that denied approximately 20,000 people annually a voter registration opportunity. And in Pennsylvania, our lawsuit prompted the legislature to amend its absentee voter rules to ensure the counting of any ballots received by 8 p.m. on election night
Purging voter purges. In Indiana, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a block on Indiana’s voter purge statute, which required removing voters from voting rolls without any notice based on the Interstate Crosscheck system, which originated in Kansas.
The First Amendment …
Protecting the right to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. In Dakota Rural Action v. Noem, a federal district court blocked enforcement of the unconstitutional provisions of several South Dakota laws, including the recently-enacted Riot Boosting Act. The provisions threaten activists who encourage or organize protests, particularly protests of the Keystone XL pipeline, with fines, civil liabilities, and/or criminal penalties of up to 25 years in prison.
Stopping religious and anti-religious censorship. In Pennsylvania, we challenged the County of Lackawanna Transit System’s prohibition on all “religious” advertisements on mass transit, which was applied to reject an ad that used the word atheist. The Third Circuit held that the policy violated the First Amendment because it censored both religious and anti-religious viewpoints, under a scattershot censorship regime that offered unfettered discretion to government officials to approve or disapprove speech.
Ensuring the right to criticize government officials without going to jail. In New Hampshire, a federal judge ruled that a man twice arrested for criminal libel for criticizing the police could challenge the constitutionality of New Hampshire’s criminal libel law.
Protecting the right to tell jurors the truth about their rights. In Colorado, we successfully supported the rights of criminal justice advocates to hand out pamphlets outside a courthouse advising jurors of their right to nullification by refusing to convict criminal defendants. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed with us that under the First Amendment, the advocates could not be prosecuted under a jury tampering statute.
Ensuring free expression of religion. We represented Airman 1st Class Sunjit Singh Rathour and obtained a religious accommodation from the Air Force to wear his turban, beard, and unshorn hair in compliance with his Sikh religious beliefs. Rathour became the first Airman to complete both basic training and advanced technical training while wearing his Sikh articles of faith.
… And the Fourth
Reminding police to get that warrant. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously held that police must obtain a warrant in order to download data stored in a car’s computer systems during an investigation after a car crash, and suppressed digital evidence obtained through a warrantless search. This is the first state supreme court to recognize the danger of warrantless access to the unprecedented types and quantities of digital data collected by modern cars.
Protecting your laptop at the border. A federal district court ruled that all electronic device searches at the border must be done pursuant to reasonable suspicion of contraband on the device. This is the first time any court has ever held that all border device searches must be based on reasonable suspicion. The government had argued that it was free to search anyone’s laptop for any reason, without having any basis for suspicion.
Criminal Justice Reform
Justice for the indigent. In a case challenging the constitutionality of a forfeiture as “excessive” under the Eighth Amendment, the Indiana Supreme Court adopted the view we advocated in our amicus brief: that in assessing whether a fine is excessive, the courts must take into account the economic circumstances of the individual. As the court wrote, “To hold the opposite would generate a new fiction: that taking away the same piece of property from a billionaire and from someone who owns nothing else punishes each person equally.”
Enforcing the right to counsel. We settled a class-action lawsuit against two municipalities for denying lawyers to criminal defendants who can’t afford private attorneys. Under the settlement, both municipalities will contract with a public defender to provide meaningful representation and provide notice of the right to counsel to every person charged with an offense that carries the possibility of jail.
Fighting unfair pre-trial conditions. In Arizona, we successfully challenged pre-trial conditions that included setting unaffordable bond without due process and making defendants pay to monitor themselves via GPS. The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that people cannot be forced to pay for the cost of their own pretrial conditions.
Reining in bounty hunters. In Mitchell v. First Call Bail and Surety, Inc., the ACLU, the ACLU of Montana, and Terrell Marshall Law sued bounty hunters, a bail bonding company, and insurers for a violent break in and attack on a Montana family. This is the first time that a court has extended the possibility of liability for bounty hunting abuses all the way up to the bail insurance companies in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations scheme.
Protecting Prisoners’ Rights
In Oklahoma, we got the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to move death row prisoners from the windowless underground bunker where they were confined to a unit that provides greater access to natural light, fresh air, and outdoor exercise. In Pennsylvania, we achieved a class action settlement that will end the automatic and permanent solitary confinement of prisoners on death row in that state. And in Arizona, a federal court rejected prison officials’ effort to terminate a consent decree requiring the provision of out-of-cell time to maximum security prisoners.
This is truly remarkable work by a truly remarkable group of advocates across this country, state affiliates, national attorneys and paralegals, and more. We are grateful for all the work these victories reflect, and for the courageous judges who have ruled in favor of the disadvantaged, dispossessed, and marginalized, and in favor of the Constitution. Together, we’re ensuring that the Bill of Rights remains a reality for all.
Published November 27, 2019 at 01:08AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2KVU4WZ
Thanksgiving is here: that time of year when we pause to take stock of all we’re grateful for. At the ACLU, we’re saying thanks for all the crucial wins from our legal teams — and for the Constitution.
In just the last few months, we’ve racked up many essential victories in the ongoing battle to protect civil liberties and civil rights. The scope of these victories is breathtaking: they span criminal justice, privacy, religious freedom, reproductive rights, due process for immigrants, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and the right to protest the Keystone pipeline, among others. We’ve won crucial victories over those who would, absent our resistance, sacrifice liberty and rights to some other ends. For all of these wins, we are deeply grateful.
Immigrants’ Rights
Preserving due process for immigrants. We obtained a court order blocking President Trump’s vast expansion of “expedited removal,” a summary deportation process that denies immigrants core procedural protections and eliminates virtually all appeals. We also won a temporary injunction requiring the government to afford access to lawyers for immigrants facing forcible return to Mexico who fear persecution there.
Reproductive Freedom
Beating back state abortion bans. Our team won a preliminary injunction against Georgia’s law banning abortion, and another injunction against Alabama’s near-total ban on abortions. After seven states moved to introduce abortion bans earlier this year, we blocked five of the seven bans in court as unconstitutional, while our ally in this fight, the Center for Reproductive Rights, blocked the other two. In addition, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld our injunction against an Ohio law prohibiting abortions based on the patient’s reason.
Protecting your health care. A federal judge in New York blocked President Trump’s so-called “conscience rule,” which would have allowed doctors, nurses, and other health care providers nationwide to place their own views over the needs of their patience and refuse to provide health care to which they object on moral or religious grounds. The court held that the rule was arbitrary and rested on demonstrably false assertions by the administration.
Racial Justice
Tackling racial profiling in Mississippi. In Brown v. Madison County, we reached a groundbreaking settlement with the Madison County Sheriff’s Department to end racially-biased police practices. In 2017, we sued the department over its systemic targeting of black people for illegal — and often violent — searches and seizures. According to the settlement, the sheriff’s department must train deputies on proper practices and collect data on checkpoints and pedestrian stops that will be verified by a Community Oversight Board and plaintiffs’ attorneys. This is one of the first consent decrees in Mississippi to address racialized policing.
Transgender Justice
Challenging the refusal to amend birth certificates to accurately report gender. Ohio is one of three states that refuse to update the gender marker on birth certificates for people who have transitioned to live their true gender. A federal district court ruling affirmed our equal protection and free speech claims.
Voting Rights
Fighting the 21st century poll tax. In Florida, a state court blocked the requirement that returning citizens in Florida repay all fines, restitution, and fees associated with their sentences before regaining their voting rights. The court ruled that Florida must establish a process where people who cannot afford to pay their legal financial obligations can still regain their voting rights. This victory helps keep our Amendment 4 ballot referendum victory in place.
Safeguarding voter access. In Tennessee, a court blocked restrictions on voter registration drives, including draconian fines and criminal sanctions. In Missouri, we successfully challenged the state’s failure to provide voter registration services to people who update their driver’s license address online — an omission that denied approximately 20,000 people annually a voter registration opportunity. And in Pennsylvania, our lawsuit prompted the legislature to amend its absentee voter rules to ensure the counting of any ballots received by 8 p.m. on election night
Purging voter purges. In Indiana, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a block on Indiana’s voter purge statute, which required removing voters from voting rolls without any notice based on the Interstate Crosscheck system, which originated in Kansas.
The First Amendment …
Protecting the right to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. In Dakota Rural Action v. Noem, a federal district court blocked enforcement of the unconstitutional provisions of several South Dakota laws, including the recently-enacted Riot Boosting Act. The provisions threaten activists who encourage or organize protests, particularly protests of the Keystone XL pipeline, with fines, civil liabilities, and/or criminal penalties of up to 25 years in prison.
Stopping religious and anti-religious censorship. In Pennsylvania, we challenged the County of Lackawanna Transit System’s prohibition on all “religious” advertisements on mass transit, which was applied to reject an ad that used the word atheist. The Third Circuit held that the policy violated the First Amendment because it censored both religious and anti-religious viewpoints, under a scattershot censorship regime that offered unfettered discretion to government officials to approve or disapprove speech.
Ensuring the right to criticize government officials without going to jail. In New Hampshire, a federal judge ruled that a man twice arrested for criminal libel for criticizing the police could challenge the constitutionality of New Hampshire’s criminal libel law.
Protecting the right to tell jurors the truth about their rights. In Colorado, we successfully supported the rights of criminal justice advocates to hand out pamphlets outside a courthouse advising jurors of their right to nullification by refusing to convict criminal defendants. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed with us that under the First Amendment, the advocates could not be prosecuted under a jury tampering statute.
Ensuring free expression of religion. We represented Airman 1st Class Sunjit Singh Rathour and obtained a religious accommodation from the Air Force to wear his turban, beard, and unshorn hair in compliance with his Sikh religious beliefs. Rathour became the first Airman to complete both basic training and advanced technical training while wearing his Sikh articles of faith.
… And the Fourth
Reminding police to get that warrant. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously held that police must obtain a warrant in order to download data stored in a car’s computer systems during an investigation after a car crash, and suppressed digital evidence obtained through a warrantless search. This is the first state supreme court to recognize the danger of warrantless access to the unprecedented types and quantities of digital data collected by modern cars.
Protecting your laptop at the border. A federal district court ruled that all electronic device searches at the border must be done pursuant to reasonable suspicion of contraband on the device. This is the first time any court has ever held that all border device searches must be based on reasonable suspicion. The government had argued that it was free to search anyone’s laptop for any reason, without having any basis for suspicion.
Criminal Justice Reform
Justice for the indigent. In a case challenging the constitutionality of a forfeiture as “excessive” under the Eighth Amendment, the Indiana Supreme Court adopted the view we advocated in our amicus brief: that in assessing whether a fine is excessive, the courts must take into account the economic circumstances of the individual. As the court wrote, “To hold the opposite would generate a new fiction: that taking away the same piece of property from a billionaire and from someone who owns nothing else punishes each person equally.”
Enforcing the right to counsel. We settled a class-action lawsuit against two municipalities for denying lawyers to criminal defendants who can’t afford private attorneys. Under the settlement, both municipalities will contract with a public defender to provide meaningful representation and provide notice of the right to counsel to every person charged with an offense that carries the possibility of jail.
Fighting unfair pre-trial conditions. In Arizona, we successfully challenged pre-trial conditions that included setting unaffordable bond without due process and making defendants pay to monitor themselves via GPS. The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that people cannot be forced to pay for the cost of their own pretrial conditions.
Reining in bounty hunters. In Mitchell v. First Call Bail and Surety, Inc., the ACLU, the ACLU of Montana, and Terrell Marshall Law sued bounty hunters, a bail bonding company, and insurers for a violent break in and attack on a Montana family. This is the first time that a court has extended the possibility of liability for bounty hunting abuses all the way up to the bail insurance companies in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations scheme.
Protecting Prisoners’ Rights
In Oklahoma, we got the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to move death row prisoners from the windowless underground bunker where they were confined to a unit that provides greater access to natural light, fresh air, and outdoor exercise. In Pennsylvania, we achieved a class action settlement that will end the automatic and permanent solitary confinement of prisoners on death row in that state. And in Arizona, a federal court rejected prison officials’ effort to terminate a consent decree requiring the provision of out-of-cell time to maximum security prisoners.
This is truly remarkable work by a truly remarkable group of advocates across this country, state affiliates, national attorneys and paralegals, and more. We are grateful for all the work these victories reflect, and for the courageous judges who have ruled in favor of the disadvantaged, dispossessed, and marginalized, and in favor of the Constitution. Together, we’re ensuring that the Bill of Rights remains a reality for all.
Published November 26, 2019 at 07:38PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2KVU4WZ
It’s Past Time Congress Reined in the President’s Emergency Powers
The full Senate could soon consider legislation that would rein in the president’s emergency powers and bolster the principle of separation of powers that underpins American democracy. This legislation, the ARTICLE ONE Act as amended by a Senate committee, contains sensible reforms of the National Emergencies Act of 1976 (NEA), the flawed and outdated law that governs the emergency declaration process.
Under the current national emergencies declaration process, Congress must muster a veto-proof two-thirds supermajority to terminate any emergency that the president wants to continue, along with the special powers it activates. Congress has never pulled off this extremely difficult feat, not even this March and October when the majority of lawmakers voted to counter President Trump’s unprecedented attempt to usurp Congress’s power of the purse by declaring an emergency at the southern border.
This is not the kind of outcome that Congress envisioned when it overhauled the national emergency declaration process during the post-Watergate era. When lawmakers enacted the NEA in 1976, they established the ability of Congress to end an emergency at any time by passing a concurrent resolution, which unlike a joint resolution does not go to the president’s desk. However, in 1983 the Supreme Court invalidated this mechanism as an unconstitutional legislative veto, leading to the situation we have now. The ARTICLE ONE Act makes some crucial updates to this faulty framework.
Most notably, the bill would revise the current emergency renewal framework so that a national emergency would automatically expire after an initial 30-day time window — enough time to manage the immediate aftermath of a serious crisis — unless a simple majority of Congress agrees with the president to renew it. The ARTICLE ONE Act would also require the president to seek congressional approval by joint resolution to extend the emergency after the first year and every subsequent year thereafter.
Under the amended measure, existing national emergencies would be subject to annual congressional approval at the end of each emergency’s current one-year term as well. Thus, the bill would require more robust collaboration between the executive and legislative branches in renewing national emergencies. It would also further enable stronger oversight by imposing enhanced transparency and reporting requirements on the president.
In today’s disturbing status quo, the president enjoys excessive discretion to pick and choose which emergency power to exercise and for how long, potentially in perpetuity. By one leading estimate, a president’s declaration of an emergency can unlock more than a hundred other special authorities for that president’s use—including sweeping powers with profound, troubling implications for Americans’ civil liberties. Furthermore, national “emergencies” can and do persist for years and decades.
Vast executive powers with weak oversight and weak checks against abuse are anathema to our democracy, where the separation of powers between co-equal branches of government is supposed to guard against tyranny. It’s now too easy for a president to institute permanent states of “emergency” no matter how inappropriate and too hard for Congress to terminate them. That current system is ripe for extraordinary abuse.
Lawmakers should support reforming the NEA regardless of their stance on any particular emergency declaration. The current president’s recent actions merely highlight the longstanding need to restore more accountability to all presidents’ access to an enormous array of emergency powers. That need is why the ARTICLE ONE Act’s new time limits, approval and oversight mechanisms, and affirmative agreement mechanism would represent major progress.
To be clear, reforming the NEA isn’t enough. Congress must follow up by reviewing and overhauling the authorities delegated for the president’s “emergency” use — including but not limited to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Those laws are worth a mention in this context because they are the basis for exemptions in the bill as amended by committee.
The executive branch has repeatedly used the IEEPA to violate fundamental due process guarantees and the Trump administration has repeatedly relied on INA Section 212(f) as authority for its Muslim ban, asylum ban, and other anti-immigrant proposals. Thus Congress should view updating the NEA as merely the first step toward broader reforms of the emergency powers themselves, particularly these statutes.
In the meantime, lawmakers have a valuable opportunity to reform the National Emergencies Act and restore Congress’s ability to supervise presidential declarations of national emergency. For the preservation of our democracy, we urge that they take up this opportunity.
Published November 26, 2019 at 03:24PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/33oo8AW
It’s Past Time Congress Reined in the President’s Emergency Powers
The full Senate could soon consider legislation that would rein in the president’s emergency powers and bolster the principle of separation of powers that underpins American democracy. This legislation, the ARTICLE ONE Act as amended by a Senate committee, contains sensible reforms of the National Emergencies Act of 1976 (NEA), the flawed and outdated law that governs the emergency declaration process.
Under the current national emergencies declaration process, Congress must muster a veto-proof two-thirds supermajority to terminate any emergency that the president wants to continue, along with the special powers it activates. Congress has never pulled off this extremely difficult feat, not even this March and October when the majority of lawmakers voted to counter President Trump’s unprecedented attempt to usurp Congress’s power of the purse by declaring an emergency at the southern border.
This is not the kind of outcome that Congress envisioned when it overhauled the national emergency declaration process during the post-Watergate era. When lawmakers enacted the NEA in 1976, they established the ability of Congress to end an emergency at any time by passing a concurrent resolution, which unlike a joint resolution does not go to the president’s desk. However, in 1983 the Supreme Court invalidated this mechanism as an unconstitutional legislative veto, leading to the situation we have now. The ARTICLE ONE Act makes some crucial updates to this faulty framework.
Most notably, the bill would revise the current emergency renewal framework so that a national emergency would automatically expire after an initial 30-day time window — enough time to manage the immediate aftermath of a serious crisis — unless a simple majority of Congress agrees with the president to renew it. The ARTICLE ONE Act would also require the president to seek congressional approval by joint resolution to extend the emergency after the first year and every subsequent year thereafter.
Under the amended measure, existing national emergencies would be subject to annual congressional approval at the end of each emergency’s current one-year term as well. Thus, the bill would require more robust collaboration between the executive and legislative branches in renewing national emergencies. It would also further enable stronger oversight by imposing enhanced transparency and reporting requirements on the president.
In today’s disturbing status quo, the president enjoys excessive discretion to pick and choose which emergency power to exercise and for how long, potentially in perpetuity. By one leading estimate, a president’s declaration of an emergency can unlock more than a hundred other special authorities for that president’s use—including sweeping powers with profound, troubling implications for Americans’ civil liberties. Furthermore, national “emergencies” can and do persist for years and decades.
Vast executive powers with weak oversight and weak checks against abuse are anathema to our democracy, where the separation of powers between co-equal branches of government is supposed to guard against tyranny. It’s now too easy for a president to institute permanent states of “emergency” no matter how inappropriate and too hard for Congress to terminate them. That current system is ripe for extraordinary abuse.
Lawmakers should support reforming the NEA regardless of their stance on any particular emergency declaration. The current president’s recent actions merely highlight the longstanding need to restore more accountability to all presidents’ access to an enormous array of emergency powers. That need is why the ARTICLE ONE Act’s new time limits, approval and oversight mechanisms, and affirmative agreement mechanism would represent major progress.
To be clear, reforming the NEA isn’t enough. Congress must follow up by reviewing and overhauling the authorities delegated for the president’s “emergency” use — including but not limited to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Those laws are worth a mention in this context because they are the basis for exemptions in the bill as amended by committee.
The executive branch has repeatedly used the IEEPA to violate fundamental due process guarantees and the Trump administration has repeatedly relied on INA Section 212(f) as authority for its Muslim ban, asylum ban, and other anti-immigrant proposals. Thus Congress should view updating the NEA as merely the first step toward broader reforms of the emergency powers themselves, particularly these statutes.
In the meantime, lawmakers have a valuable opportunity to reform the National Emergencies Act and restore Congress’s ability to supervise presidential declarations of national emergency. For the preservation of our democracy, we urge that they take up this opportunity.
Published November 26, 2019 at 08:54PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/33oo8AW
In Nicaragua, She Dodged Bullets. Now She’s Stuck at the Border.
(Ciudad Juarez, Mexico) The sting of tear gas was still in Julia’s eyes when she ran into a public park in the center of the Nicaraguan city of Estelí on June 20, 2018. Earlier that day, she’d wrapped her face in a blue-and-white bandanna – the colors of the Nicaraguan flag – and joined a student-led march against the government of President Daniel Ortega, whose proposed cuts to social benefits were sparking tense street demonstrations across the country. [Note: ‘Julia’ is a pseudonym; the ACLU is protecting her identity for her safety.]
As the students marched through the streets, paramilitary police arrived, firing tear gas into the crowd. Supporters of the government threw rocks at the demonstrators, who mostly scattered while a few scuffled with police.
In the chaos that followed, Julia and a small group of friends hid in a nearby house, splashing water in their eyes and waiting for a safe moment to leave. Night fell, and they decided to make a break for it. But men allied with the government were waiting, and as the group ran into the park, shots rang out.
When the shooting stopped, two protesters were dead. One, 24-year old graduate student Franco Valdivia Machado, was a friend of Julia’s. In videos gathered by human rights investigators, people can be seen dragging his lifeless, blood-soaked body through the street.
Julia had just turned 18.
Today, she is one of nearly 60,000 people who’ve been placed into the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” (MPP) which forces asylum-seekers to wait for their court hearings in Mexico rather than inside the United States. Since mid-June, she’s been stuck in Ciudad Juarez, a city not long ago considered to be the murder capital of the world.
Julia sits in a home found for her by legal advocates in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
Julia is 19 now, but she looks younger. She spends her days waiting for a December court hearing in a small house that a legal advocate found for her in the arid outskirts of the city. Slight and soft-spoken, she tells her story in a steady voice.
“I don’t know anybody,” she said. “I don’t have any family here.”
The shootings in the Estelí park marked the beginning of a brutal crackdown on student demonstrators by the Nicaraguan government. In the following months, more than 300 people were killed, and human rights groups say hundreds more were arrested and brutally tortured. Some were friends of Julia’s, including two who she says are still in jail for speaking out about the crackdown.
After Machado was killed in the park, other people who’d marched in the protests started to disappear or turn up dead. Then, men who said they represented the government came looking for her at her house. She wasn’t at home, but her sisters were.
“They threatened my sisters,” Julia said. “They said they would kill them first and then they would kill me.”
Julia realized the government knew she’d participated in the demonstrations and that Nicaragua wasn’t safe for her or her family anymore. So along with her sister, brother-in-law, and niece, she decided to flee north, hoping to find shelter inside the U.S. They packed up what they could carry and left, traveling to Guatemala and then Mexico.
The route north for migrants and asylum-seekers through Mexico is notoriously perilous, and Julia says that along the way they tried to keep a low profile, riding buses and speaking to each another sparingly so their accents wouldn’t give them away.
“When we would go out to eat and people heard our accent, that we weren’t from Mexico, they would make ugly faces at us,” she recalled.
Julia shows a photograph on her phone of her marching in student demonstrations in Nicaragua, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
On May 23rd of this year, the four reached El Paso, Texas, where they turned themselves in to Customs and Border Protection officers after crossing into the U.S. Julia described what had happened in Nicaragua and asked for asylum. Without explanation, the officers separated her from the rest of her family and sent her to a hielera – a holding center for detained immigrants.
The cell was crowded with other migrants, and she says one officer threw bottles of water at them when they were thirsty.
“We were scared to go to the doctor, because officers told us that if we went to a doctor it would affect us when we saw a judge,” she recalled.
After twenty days, CBP officers gave her a slip of paper with a court date in El Paso, but told her that she’d been placed into the MPP and she’d have to wait back in Mexico until then. Her sister, brother-in-law, and niece were still in detention inside the U.S., so alone and back across the border, Julia had nowhere to go.
“They told us there wasn’t any shelter and that they were giving priority to mothers with children,” she said.
Ciudad Juarez is less dangerous now than it was a decade ago, when it was notorious both for being statistically the most violent city in the world and the site of a mysterious wave of disappearances and murders of women. But the murder rate has begun to climb again, and in 2017 90 women were killed in Juarez, nearly twice as many as the previous year. So far this year, the city has seen around 100 murders per month, and cartel-related violence has spiked sharply in recent weeks.
The Paso del Norte bridge to El Paso, Texas in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
In contrast, just across the bridge in El Paso, Texas, there were only 23 murders total in 2018.
A Mexican aid worker noticed Julia, and worried for her, helped find her a spot in a privately run shelter in the city. But it was desperately overcrowded, and Julia says that the overworked administrators who ran the shelter were verbally abusive, with one telling a group of people once that he wished he had a gun so he could shoot them all. At first she tried to find work in Juarez, but one day she was followed by men in the street. After that she started leaving the shelter less often.
Alone, with no lawyer to represent her in her case, Julia was more isolated than she’d ever been in her life. But then, nearly three months after arriving at the shelter, she finally caught a break.
Tania Guerrero, a Juarez-based lawyer who works for the Washington D.C.-based Catholic Legal Immigration Network, was running intake interviews in the shelter when she met Julia.
“She looked like she hadn’t slept in a long time, just eternally exhausted,” Guerrero recalled. “She didn’t look her age.”
Julia and another young girl from El Salvador had become close, and Guerrero was worried that the two weren’t safe there.
“Being 19, all by herself, and she’s a beautiful young lady. I felt it placed her in a fragile state,” she said.
Guerrero was plugged in to a network of Catholic organizations raising funds for asylum-seekers and migrants. One had a house in Juarez they’d offered as a safe space, and Tania was able to get Julia and her friend out of the shelter and into the house along with two other women.
Julia stands in a window in her room in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
A few weeks later, Guerrero brought Benjamin Osorio, a Virginia-based attorney who was in Juarez looking for pro bono asylum cases, to meet Julia. He quickly decided to take hers.
“Just speaking with her, she’s very compelling and sharp, and she has great evidence,” he said. “She’s in the 5th Circuit, which is rough on asylum, but you just feel terrible for this young girl out on her own really with no resources. But she’s very bright, and we think she can win her case.”
Defenders of the MPP say the program is necessary to weed out fraudulent asylum claims, and when it was unveiled former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Neilsen made reference to “aliens trying to game the system.” But Julia’s story illustrates how the precise category of person the asylum system was created to protect are currently being placed into the program, requiring them to wait for long periods in dangerous border towns for court dates.
The ACLU is currently suing to end the MPP, with the 9th Circuit having heard arguments in the case, Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan, on October 1st. While the court weighs its decision, the program has been allowed to stay in place.
Without the good fortune of meeting Guerrero and later Osorio, Julia would still be facing the unfamiliar shelters and streets of Juarez – along with U.S. immigration law – completely on her own.
From what Osorio’s seen, her case isn’t a rarity.
“I think that the American public would be surprised at the massive number of people who have truly valid asylum claims that are being forced to wait in dangerous conditions.”
Julia’s next court date is in El Paso in early December. Until then, she passes her time with the other women in the house, who have come to describe themselves as a kind of family. Her laugh is piercing, and huddled over their phones together, she and her friend look like teenagers anywhere. She shows off pictures of the march in Estelí, a row of her friends holding up a banner with her just before the day went bad.
The house is mostly safe, but there have been periodic reminders of the violence lurking just beyond its gates. A few weeks earlier two men had been shot three blocks away. Julia leaves sparingly, almost never without Guerrero.
Another woman waiting in the house for her hearing hangs laundry outside, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
“I do worry about her safety,” Osorio said. “She’s a young, vulnerable teenage girl. And there’s concerns there, especially when you talk to the number of people that have been targeted, have been kidnapped, robbed or assaulted. I mean, she would obviously be a prime target for that.”
If Julia does win her case, the Department of Homeland Security will have 30 days to appeal. Recently, Customs and Border Protection officials said that asylum-seekers can be sent to Mexico to wait while their appeals move through a backlogged system. Osorio says its unclear whether Julia would be treated as ‘detained’ or ‘non-detained’ in an appeal, or what might happen to her during the process.
“Non-detained appeals are taking two years right now,” he said. “So is she going to sit in Juarez for two years? I don’t know.”
Julia says that above all, she wants to get back into school. Her sister was released on a $15,000 bond in Chicago, but she wants to join her mother in Los Angeles. She says she’s hoping to train to be a dentist. “I’ve always found it interesting,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
As her court date gets closer, her anxiety is growing.
“I can’t go back to Nicaragua, I have nowhere to go,” she said. “I don’t have family there because I lived with my sisters, and if I go back I’ll be jailed because I participated in the marches.”
Published November 25, 2019 at 08:32PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2DeGASf
In Nicaragua, She Dodged Bullets. Now She’s Stuck at the Border.
(Ciudad Juarez, Mexico) The sting of tear gas was still in Julia’s eyes when she ran into a public park in the center of the Nicaraguan city of Estelí on June 20, 2018. Earlier that day, she’d wrapped her face in a blue-and-white bandanna – the colors of the Nicaraguan flag – and joined a student-led march against the government of President Daniel Ortega, whose proposed cuts to social benefits were sparking tense street demonstrations across the country. [Note: ‘Julia’ is a pseudonym; the ACLU is protecting her identity for her safety.]
As the students marched through the streets, paramilitary police arrived, firing tear gas into the crowd. Supporters of the government threw rocks at the demonstrators, who mostly scattered while a few scuffled with police.
In the chaos that followed, Julia and a small group of friends hid in a nearby house, splashing water in their eyes and waiting for a safe moment to leave. Night fell, and they decided to make a break for it. But men allied with the government were waiting, and as the group ran into the park, shots rang out.
When the shooting stopped, two protesters were dead. One, 24-year old graduate student Franco Valdivia Machado, was a friend of Julia’s. In videos gathered by human rights investigators, people can be seen dragging his lifeless, blood-soaked body through the street.
Julia had just turned 18.
Today, she is one of nearly 60,000 people who’ve been placed into the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” (MPP) which forces asylum-seekers to wait for their court hearings in Mexico rather than inside the United States. Since mid-June, she’s been stuck in Ciudad Juarez, a city not long ago considered to be the murder capital of the world.
Julia sits in a home found for her by legal advocates in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
Julia is 19 now, but she looks younger. She spends her days waiting for a December court hearing in a small house that a legal advocate found for her in the arid outskirts of the city. Slight and soft-spoken, she tells her story in a steady voice.
“I don’t know anybody,” she said. “I don’t have any family here.”
The shootings in the Estelí park marked the beginning of a brutal crackdown on student demonstrators by the Nicaraguan government. In the following months, more than 300 people were killed, and human rights groups say hundreds more were arrested and brutally tortured. Some were friends of Julia’s, including two who she says are still in jail for speaking out about the crackdown.
After Machado was killed in the park, other people who’d marched in the protests started to disappear or turn up dead. Then, men who said they represented the government came looking for her at her house. She wasn’t at home, but her sisters were.
“They threatened my sisters,” Julia said. “They said they would kill them first and then they would kill me.”
Julia realized the government knew she’d participated in the demonstrations and that Nicaragua wasn’t safe for her or her family anymore. So along with her sister, brother-in-law, and niece, she decided to flee north, hoping to find shelter inside the U.S. They packed up what they could carry and left, traveling to Guatemala and then Mexico.
The route north for migrants and asylum-seekers through Mexico is notoriously perilous, and Julia says that along the way they tried to keep a low profile, riding buses and speaking to each another sparingly so their accents wouldn’t give them away.
“When we would go out to eat and people heard our accent, that we weren’t from Mexico, they would make ugly faces at us,” she recalled.
Julia shows a photograph on her phone of her marching in student demonstrations in Nicaragua, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
On May 23rd of this year, the four reached El Paso, Texas, where they turned themselves in to Customs and Border Protection officers after crossing into the U.S. Julia described what had happened in Nicaragua and asked for asylum. Without explanation, the officers separated her from the rest of her family and sent her to a hielera – a holding center for detained immigrants.
The cell was crowded with other migrants, and she says one officer threw bottles of water at them when they were thirsty.
“We were scared to go to the doctor, because officers told us that if we went to a doctor it would affect us when we saw a judge,” she recalled.
After twenty days, CBP officers gave her a slip of paper with a court date in El Paso, but told her that she’d been placed into the MPP and she’d have to wait back in Mexico until then. Her sister, brother-in-law, and niece were still in detention inside the U.S., so alone and back across the border, Julia had nowhere to go.
“They told us there wasn’t any shelter and that they were giving priority to mothers with children,” she said.
Ciudad Juarez is less dangerous now than it was a decade ago, when it was notorious both for being statistically the most violent city in the world and the site of a mysterious wave of disappearances and murders of women. But the murder rate has begun to climb again, and in 2017 90 women were killed in Juarez, nearly twice as many as the previous year. So far this year, the city has seen around 100 murders per month, and cartel-related violence has spiked sharply in recent weeks.
The Paso del Norte bridge to El Paso, Texas in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
In contrast, just across the bridge in El Paso, Texas, there were only 23 murders total in 2018.
A Mexican aid worker noticed Julia, and worried for her, helped find her a spot in a privately run shelter in the city. But it was desperately overcrowded, and Julia says that the overworked administrators who ran the shelter were verbally abusive, with one telling a group of people once that he wished he had a gun so he could shoot them all. At first she tried to find work in Juarez, but one day she was followed by men in the street. After that she started leaving the shelter less often.
Alone, with no lawyer to represent her in her case, Julia was more isolated than she’d ever been in her life. But then, nearly three months after arriving at the shelter, she finally caught a break.
Tania Guerrero, a Juarez-based lawyer who works for the Washington D.C.-based Catholic Legal Immigration Network, was running intake interviews in the shelter when she met Julia.
“She looked like she hadn’t slept in a long time, just eternally exhausted,” Guerrero recalled. “She didn’t look her age.”
Julia and another young girl from El Salvador had become close, and Guerrero was worried that the two weren’t safe there.
“Being 19, all by herself, and she’s a beautiful young lady. I felt it placed her in a fragile state,” she said.
Guerrero was plugged in to a network of Catholic organizations raising funds for asylum-seekers and migrants. One had a house in Juarez they’d offered as a safe space, and Tania was able to get Julia and her friend out of the shelter and into the house along with two other women.
Julia stands in a window in her room in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
A few weeks later, Guerrero brought Benjamin Osorio, a Virginia-based attorney who was in Juarez looking for pro bono asylum cases, to meet Julia. He quickly decided to take hers.
“Just speaking with her, she’s very compelling and sharp, and she has great evidence,” he said. “She’s in the 5th Circuit, which is rough on asylum, but you just feel terrible for this young girl out on her own really with no resources. But she’s very bright, and we think she can win her case.”
Defenders of the MPP say the program is necessary to weed out fraudulent asylum claims, and when it was unveiled former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Neilsen made reference to “aliens trying to game the system.” But Julia’s story illustrates how the precise category of person the asylum system was created to protect are currently being placed into the program, requiring them to wait for long periods in dangerous border towns for court dates.
The ACLU is currently suing to end the MPP, with the 9th Circuit having heard arguments in the case, Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan, on October 1st. While the court weighs its decision, the program has been allowed to stay in place.
Without the good fortune of meeting Guerrero and later Osorio, Julia would still be facing the unfamiliar shelters and streets of Juarez – along with U.S. immigration law – completely on her own.
From what Osorio’s seen, her case isn’t a rarity.
“I think that the American public would be surprised at the massive number of people who have truly valid asylum claims that are being forced to wait in dangerous conditions.”
Julia’s next court date is in El Paso in early December. Until then, she passes her time with the other women in the house, who have come to describe themselves as a kind of family. Her laugh is piercing, and huddled over their phones together, she and her friend look like teenagers anywhere. She shows off pictures of the march in Estelí, a row of her friends holding up a banner with her just before the day went bad.
The house is mostly safe, but there have been periodic reminders of the violence lurking just beyond its gates. A few weeks earlier two men had been shot three blocks away. Julia leaves sparingly, almost never without Guerrero.
Another woman waiting in the house for her hearing hangs laundry outside, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 10, 2019.Guillermo Arias for the ACLU
“I do worry about her safety,” Osorio said. “She’s a young, vulnerable teenage girl. And there’s concerns there, especially when you talk to the number of people that have been targeted, have been kidnapped, robbed or assaulted. I mean, she would obviously be a prime target for that.”
If Julia does win her case, the Department of Homeland Security will have 30 days to appeal. Recently, Customs and Border Protection officials said that asylum-seekers can be sent to Mexico to wait while their appeals move through a backlogged system. Osorio says its unclear whether Julia would be treated as ‘detained’ or ‘non-detained’ in an appeal, or what might happen to her during the process.
“Non-detained appeals are taking two years right now,” he said. “So is she going to sit in Juarez for two years? I don’t know.”
Julia says that above all, she wants to get back into school. Her sister was released on a $15,000 bond in Chicago, but she wants to join her mother in Los Angeles. She says she’s hoping to train to be a dentist. “I’ve always found it interesting,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
As her court date gets closer, her anxiety is growing.
“I can’t go back to Nicaragua, I have nowhere to go,” she said. “I don’t have family there because I lived with my sisters, and if I go back I’ll be jailed because I participated in the marches.”
Published November 26, 2019 at 02:02AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2DeGASf
The Trump Administration is Unlawfully Detaining a U.S. Resident Without Charge
Adham Hassoun completed his criminal sentence and was set to be released from prison almost three years ago. But the government — now claiming unprecedented and unconstitutional powers under the USA Patriot Act — continues to hold Adham in detention, indefinitely and without charge.
Adham has called the United States home for 30 years. Born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugees, Adham and his family — like many other refugees — suffered violence at the hands of various armed factions. In search of peace, Adham moved to the United States in 1989, joining many other members of his family. He earned a degree in computer science, married, and had three children.
In 2007, the government charged Adham with crimes related to his support for Muslims suffering and defending themselves in military conflicts abroad in the 1990s. These “material support” charges were filed under a federal statute that has been used aggressively by the U.S. government — often improperly — to criminalize First Amendment protected speech and other non-violent acts the government deems connected to terrorism.
Upon conviction, the government asked the court to put Adham in prison for life, but the judge presiding over the trial said “no.” She pointed out that Adham posed no threat to anyone in the United States or elsewhere, and that the crimes for which Adham was convicted involved “no violent acts, had no identifiable victims, and were never directed against the United States or Americans.” Instead, she determined, they were motivated by Adham’s interest in “the plight of Muslims throughout the world,” and his “firsthand” knowledge of “what happened to a country when internal politics turned violent.”
Adham completed his 15-year sentence, reduced by two years for good behavior, in October 2017. By law, he should be a free man. But, the government refuses to release him. Instead, it has cited one flawed executive power after the other in order to deny our client his constitutional rights.
The government first claimed it could keep Adham locked up under an immigration statute that allows the government to detain immigrants for no more than six months pending their removal from the United States. But, as the child of Palestinian refugees, Adham is not a citizen of any country, and had no country to which he could immediately go to.
Then, after the six months ran out and a federal judge again ordered Adham’s release, the government declared Adham a national security threat and invoked a federal immigration regulation — one that has been used just once before — to keep Adham locked up without any charges.
Now, after the ACLU, the Clinical Legal Education program of the University at Buffalo School of Law, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a habeas challenge on Adham’s behalf, the government doubled down on untested detention authorities, asserting a never-before-used provision under the USA Patriot Act to keep him in detention.
Let’s be clear: The government’s repeated and now unprecedented efforts to keep our client in prison indefinitely and without charge are unconstitutional.
The Constitution forbids the government from imposing life sentences by fiat, much less by invoking a vague, easily manipulated, and fear-inducing term like “national security.” If the government believes Adham has committed a crime, it should charge him and allow him to mount a defense in court. It cannot, however, assert unlawful and flawed powers to make an end run around his constitutional rights.
The Patriot Act has been used repeatedly by the government in an attempt to justify rights-violating surveillance and other abuses, but never before has the government invoked it to hold someone in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of a due process.
As the ACLU and University of Buffalo Law Clinic made clear in court last week, the fundamental flaws in these detention authorities mean that the court should order Adham’s immediate release. At the very least, the court should order the government to prove its case and hold a hearing in which Adham can put the government’s allegations to the test. The Constitution does not permit any less.
Published November 25, 2019 at 04:18PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/34kiZLM
