Thread: GA: Lawsuit Challenges Local Immigration Enforcement

Lawsuit Challenges Local Immigration Enforcement

Cobb County Sheriff Among Defendants

POSTED: 9:02 pm EDT October 14, 2010

ATLANTA -- Three immigrants in Georgia are suing to challenge a government program that allows local authorities to enforce federal immigration law, and they are seeking to have the case declared a class action to represent many other immigrants.

Experts say the lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in Atlanta, could be the first to directly challenge the legitimacy of the 287(g) program, which has been used to identify more than 180,000 illegal immigrants for deportation nationwide since 2006.

"I have heard of nobody filing a lawsuit on this, and I would have heard about it," said Charles Kuck, a prominent Atlanta immigration lawyer and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The lawsuit names U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton, Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren, an investigator for the Georgia Department of Public Safety and other officials as defendants.

A Department of Public Safety spokesman and a spokeswoman for Warren's office said Thursday their agencies hadn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment. An ICE spokesman said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit seeks to define the class as "all Hispanic persons who have been or will be restrained and interrogated within the State of Georgia" by local authorities enforcing federal immigration law under an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

As of late September, the 287(g) program had been used to identify 14,692 illegal immigrants in Georgia for deportation in the four years since Cobb became the first county in the state to launch the program, according to ICE. Three additional counties plus the state Department of Public Safety have since signed agreements.

The lawsuit alleges ICE has failed to train, supervise and otherwise oversee sheriff's deputies in Cobb County, where the three plaintiffs live. It also claims ICE has improperly delegated its power to local authorities.

"This is a bad thing, and it tears apart families," said attorney Erik Meder, who filed the lawsuit. "While these people are certainly in the country illegally, they aren't criminals and don't deserve to be locked up and separated from their families."

Immigration officials have broad discretionary power and should not be issuing a notice to appear -- which initiates deportation proceedings -- for illegal immigrants who are arrested and discovered to be in the country illegally after initially having been stopped for relatively minor offenses, the lawsuit says.

The program is part of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act, but wasn't used much until 2006. It is intended to train state and local officers in immigration law enforcement and enables them to identify and detain illegal immigrants, who can then be turned over to ICE.

It has become a rallying point for immigrant rights activists all over the country who say it encourages racial profiling and discourages Latinos from reporting crimes for fear of being deported.

The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, reported in March that the 287(g) program was poorly supervised and provided insufficient training to officers. The inspector general made recommendations for overhauling the program.

It was the second critical report for the program. The Government Accountability Office had criticized it in July 2009.

Meder said the program is unconstitutional because it "impermissibly delegates federal power to local authorities with insufficient oversight."

Kuck doesn't support the 287(g) program but said he believes Congress specifically authorized ICE to delegate enforcement authority to local entities.

"Unfortunately, I don't think it's unconstitutional," he said. "I don't think there's any harm in challenging it, but I don't expect the suit to go anywhere. And I certainly don't think it will be given class-action status."

Brittney Nystrom of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy organization, said she hasn't heard of any other lawsuit that directly attacks 287(g) on its merits.

"Most of the advocacy around this program is that local authorities aren't using the authority they're given correctly, that there's racial profiling, for example," she said.

The three named plaintiffs in the lawsuit "each represent a different kind of abuse" of the program, Meder said.

One, a Mexican citizen who came to the U.S. legally in 2004 but overstayed her authorization, was arrested after a car crash for not having a driver's license and is being deported.

The second, an illegal immigrant arrested on a shoplifting charge that she is fighting, is in deportation proceedings. But the lawsuit argues she should be able to stay until her criminal case is decided.

The third is an El Salvadoran immigrant who has legal authorization to work in the U.S. but was arrested in July on felony

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/news/25396831/detail.html

These are not very good poster people for their cause.

I'll bet the illegal with no driver's license also did not have insurance, yet caused the crash, perhaps drunk.

No need to separate families, deport them all together.

Related:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-215317-0.html

"This is a bad thing, and it tears apart families," said attorney Erik Meder, who filed the lawsuit. "While these people are certainly in the country illegally, they aren't criminals and don't deserve to be locked up and separated from their families."
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umm ERIK you need to go read the immigration laws. because being in the US illegally is a crime and the punishments can be deportation back to their home country.
Erik, your not really that stupid to not know the law, i hope.
if your breaking the law, your a criminal Erik..... DOH

ADDED to homepage:

http://www.alipac.us/article-5747--0-0.html

How do i illegal immigrants from anywhere manage to abuse our legal system? If these people don't start heading home it's going to get really bad in America and the worst part of it all it's our stinking corrupt government that has allowed this to happen.

If the illegal immigrants were taking lawyers, bankers, doctors, government officials jobs/livelihoods these people would never have made it past the border.

Originally Posted by onetrickydude

If the illegal immigrants were taking lawyers, bankers, doctors, government officials jobs/livelihoods these people would never have made it past the border.

That's hitting the nail on the head! Perhaps as more and more Legal Immigrants take those jobs they'll finally wake up.

Another protected money pot for lawyers. JMO
Obama reverses Bush immigration lawyer rule
Published: Wednesday, June 3, 2009 12:16 p.m. MDT By Devlin Barrett, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday reversed a Bush administration rule that immigrants rights groups had criticized as unfair.

Attorney General Eric Holder said he is vacating an order, issued by predecessor Michael Mukasey, which said that immigrants facing deportation do not have an automatic right to an effective lawyer.

Holder said he is also instructing the Justice Department to begin working on a new rule.

Charles Kuck, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called the move "the beginning of the restoration of due process in the immigration system."

Kuck said that Holder's decision "recognizes we can't treat immigrants any differently than ourselves if we expect to receive the same benefits the Constitution provides."

Mukasey had issued a 33-page decision in January saying the Constitution does not entitle someone facing deportation to have a case reopened based upon shoddy work by a lawyer. Mukasey also said, however, that Justice Department officials have the discretion to reopen such cases if they choose.

Immigrant rights groups had criticized the Mukasey decision, saying such immigrants subject to deportation are particularly susceptible to fraudsters claiming to do legal work on their behalf.

Holder said in a statement that Mukasey's decision had not allowed for enough public comment on the issue.

"The integrity of immigration proceedings depends in part on the ability to assert claims of ineffective assistance of counsel," the attorney general said. "It is important that the American people have the opportunity to participate in formulating our procedures in this area."

At the same time, Holder agreed with Mukasey's findings in the three specific immigration cases that led to the decision.

Mukasey's ruling came after a series of instances in which immigrants claimed poor legal representation and sought to have their cases reopened after they were ordered to leave the country by an immigration judge.

The country's immigration courts do not track how many immigrants seek to reopen cases because of claims of ineffective counsel.


http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7053 ... -rule.html

Then there are just regular crooked lawyers.....
Here is one for ya..

Asylum Lawyer Charged in Human Smuggling / Prosecutors say Chinese migrants paid $13 million
September 21, 2000|By Hanna Rosin, Christine Haughney, Washington Post

(09-21) 04:00 PST New York — 2000-09-21 04:00:00 PST New York -- Prosecutors yesterday charged the Manhattan immigration lawyer who runs the nation's largest political asylum practice with helping run a smuggling ring that illegally brought thousands of Chinese immigrants to the United States.

In the first racketeering case of its kind, the U.S. attorney's office said Harvard Law School graduate Robert Porges, 61, played a key role in the operation by filing fake asylum documents, helping smugglers detain illegal immigrants until debts were paid and giving smugglers advice on how to avoid immigration authorities. He collected as much as $13 million in fees for helping to transport as many as 7,000 illegal immigrants from mainland China to the United States.

"The Porges firm greedily and cruelly exploited a cherished American value -- asylum for the world's oppressed -- and corrupted the system through which it is granted," said Mary Jo White, U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, at a news conference in Manhattan.

The phone rang unanswered at Porges' law firm and his Connecticut home yesterday. Law enforcement agents blocked the entrance to the Chinatown office and spent the day carting out white boxes stuffed with files.

In a 44-count indictment, prosecutors portrayed Porges as the immigration equivalent of a Mafia lawyer, greasing the wheels for carefully coordinated illegal activity.

In a typical case, a smuggler in China, called a "snakehead" or "boss" in the indictment, would coordinate with a smuggler in the United States to transport a group of illegal immigrants to this country. The immigrants would promise the smugglers between $40,000 and $50,000 each, paying some of it up front.

Some immigrants would succeed in evading the INS and end up in New York, where smugglers would hold them in Brooklyn until they paid the balance. Officials did not specify whether the immigrants were held against their will or agreed to work off their debts by prior arrangement, though the indictment alleges, without explanation, that some were "kidnapped" by smugglers with the help of Porges' firm.

By law, illegal immigrants detained by the INS are entitled to apply for political asylum. They are detained or released on bail if they can prove they have relatives to live with while their cases are pending.

To secure releases, Porges and his paralegals concocted thousands of fake political asylum stories, claiming, for example, that a Chinese woman had undergone a forced abortion because of China's one- child policy.

Porges and his firm filed fake documents from the so-called relatives, usually the smugglers themselves, or forged signatures of people with no relation to the aliens.

Once the immigrants were released on bail, Porges' firm would purchase airline tickets to fly them to locations chosen by the "snakeheads," who would meet them and hold them until the debt was paid.

To help the illegal immigrants secure asylum, Porges and his paralegals devised a "mentality scale" to rate the intelligence level of each client so they could fashion asylum stories that were not too complicated for each to remember.

Paralegals would write the final version in longhand to make it seem as if their clients had written them out. Later, they would coach clients to teach them to answer the judge's questions in a convincing way.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2000-09-21/n ... -smugglers

OBAMA IS REALLY WORKING HARD TO PROTECT ILLEGALS AT THE EXPENSE OF WE THE PEOPLE. IF THIS FOOL THINKS HE IS GOING TO SERVE A SECOND TERM IN THE WHITE HOUSE, HE IS CRAZIER THAN HE LOOKS. HE WILL BE VOTED OUT HE HAS HAD HIS TURN WITH ALL OF HIS LIES BECAUSE HE DOES NOT REPRESENT CHANGE OR HOPE. HE ONLY REPRESENT THOSE WHO ARE IN THE COUNTRY ILLEGALLY. IF PEOPLE HAD ONLY KNOWN WHAT HE WAS REALLY ALL ABOUT, HE WOULD NOT BE WHERE HE IS TODAY. AND NOW THAN WE KNOW, HE WILL BE VOTED OUT

Illegal invaders have no problems whatsoever finding their way to the court house steps (and attorneys to represent them) in order to sue our government in an effort to prevent them from enforcing the law against their invasion.

Why cannot American citizens file suit against the government for failure to enforce our immigration laws and keep American's safe against foreign and domestic enemies, which these invaders truly are!

Where are organizations that represent AMERICAN CITIZENS against being invaded by foreign intruders!