Thread: CT: Immigration cases are still pending

Immigration cases are still pending
By Marietta Homayonpour
Staff Writer
Article Launched: 11/03/2008 06:13:44 PM EST



DANBURY -- Two immigration cases involving day laborers, Danbury city officials, and federal agents continue to move forward.

Though separate, each case is related.

The defendants in one case -- a case that if they lose could lead to their deportation -- make up the majority of the plaintiffs in the other case -- a civil suit against the Danbury mayor, police chief, Danbury police officers and agents of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

"They're very hopeful and confident they'll get their hearing in the end and get to tell their story," Yale Law School student Elizabeth Simpson said about nine men from Ecuador who were charged in Danbury in September of 2006 on immigration violations by ICE agents who were helped by Danbury police.

The immigrants became known as the "Danbury 11" since there were originally 11 of them. Two have been deported.

The Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, a law clinic run out of Yale Law School, took up the case of the nine men. Lawyers argued unsuccessfully in immigration court in Hartford in early February for an evidentiary hearing about what happened on the day the nine men were charged.

Lawyers contended the sting operation that resulted in their clients' arrest was unlawful for several reasons. They alleged Danbury police were not authorized to make immigration arrests, ICE agents violated their own policies regarding the arrests, and the men were victims of racial profiling.

Federal immigration Judge Michael Straus, however, disagreed on all counts and said Danbury police did not exceed their authority and that ICE agents did not rely on racial profiling to make the arrests.

When the hearing request was denied, however, lawyers for the men appealed the ruling, which means the nine men can stay in this country while the appeal is pending. Most of the men, Simpson said, are living and working in Danbury.

Simpson said the men's appeal is before the Board of Immigration Appeals in northern Virginia. The defendants, she said, are asking the appeals board to remand Straus' denial of an evidentiary hearing so the details of their arrest can be heard in court.

Meanwhile, the civil suit against the Danbury officials and ICE agents which was filed in September of 2007 in United States District Court for the District of Connecticut is still pending.

Following a motion by lawyers for the Danbury defendants to get the plaintiffs' lawyers dismissed, "the case is now moving forward," Ari Holtzblatt, a Yale Law School student intern representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said.

The plaintiffs are the nine men remaining of the "Danbury 11" plus another man, Danilo Brito Vargas, who was stopped by Danbury police in a traffic incident in early 2007 and has since been deported for immigration violation.

In July of this year, Holtzblatt said that Magistrate Judge Donna Martinez ruled against disqualifying the plaintiffs' lawyers.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, however, said he and the other Danbury defendants had a good case for disqualifying the plaintiffs' lawyers. "There was a potential conflict," Boughton said because he is part of the Connecticut Coalition for Justice and Education Funding which is suing the state over educational funding and is represented by Yale Law School lawyers.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege the city of Danbury was discriminatory in helping to arrest the Danbury 11 and that the actions were illegal because police are not deputized as federal agents.

Boughton, however, strongly disagrees. "I feel secure. Their (the plaintiffs) claims are without merit and I think we'll prevail."

Another development in the case is a move by ICE to dismiss the lawsuit against their agents. That motion is in front of Chief Judge Robert Chatigny of the U.S. District Court of Connecticut.

A spokesman for ICE public affairs for the northeast, Michael Gilhooley, said that because the case is under litigation, any comments should come from the U.S. Attorney's office. Tom Carson, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, said his office does not comment on pending litigation.

Even if the dismissal motion is granted for ICE, Holtzblatt said, the case will still remain against the Danbury defendants in the lawsuit.

Contact Marietta Homayonpour at

mhomayonpour@newstimes.com

or at (203) 731-3336.

Open cases Two immigration cases are still active Appeal of "Danbury 11" (now 9 people) for a hearing on their arrest on immigration violations in September 2006. Civil lawsuit against Danbury officials and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents over those arrests.

http://www.newstimes.com/danbury/ci_10889011?source=rss

Yalies prancing into a city and making trouble. I would speculate that many of these young students grew up in exclusive suburbs where they had little (and have little) first hand experience with the negative effects of illegal immigration.

They're here illegally... case closed! I don't care what these Yale future lawyers argue, or the ACLU for that matter, they are illegal and (should) have NO rights under our Constitution.