Jennings v. Rodriguez highlights need for detention time limits

Justine N. Stefanelli The US Supreme Court’s decision in Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. ___ (2018) (slip opinion), denying bail hearings to thousands of detainees is a serious blow to the rule of law. Detaining categories of people without regard to their individual circumstances is an arbitrary interference with the right to liberty and, at the very least, should be accompanied by procedural safeguards. The most obvious of these is a temporal limit on immigration detention. However, US immigration law provides no maximum. The closest the law has come is the setting of a presumptively [...]

Padilla should apply to all migrants

Of all the protections guaranteed by the United States Constitution, the right to counsel is arguably the most important. As the Supreme Court famously declared in Gideon v. Wainright, a criminal defendant simply cannot be “assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.” Subsequent holdings also established that the right to counsel does not merely afford criminal defendants the euphemistic “warm body with a law degree.” Instead, the Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants the right to “the effective assistance” of counsel as well—both during trial and in pre-trial plea [...]

With SB 4, Texas faces legal and public safety climb

By Joshua Mitson Since President Trump’s inauguration a wave of “anti-sanctuary city” bills have been proposed by state legislatures across the country. Last Thursday, one of the most extreme variations of these bills was approved by the Texas state legislature and on Sunday, Governor Greg Abbott signed it into law. Senate Bill 4 (SB 4) is, in many ways, a standard anti-sanctuary policy – it compels local law enforcement agencies to honor ICE detainers, it forbids campus peace officers from obstructing local police from inquiring into immigration status of arrestees and compels [...]

Public Safety and the Fourth Amendment Work Together

By Christopher N. Lasch and César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández On Monday, the Colorado Senate is expected to consider a bill to prohibit cities and counties from limiting their role in enforcing federal immigration law. Senate Bill 17-281, the Colorado Citizen Protection Against Sanctuary Policies Act, relies on two fallacies perpetuated by the Trump administration in its campaign against so-called “sanctuary” cities. First, President Trump claims sanctuary jurisdictions endanger the public. S.B. 281 likewise claims that sanctuary policies are “contrary to the safety” of Coloradans. This [...]

How immigration raids affect birth outcomes

By Arline T. Geronimus On May 12, 2008, 900 ICE agents, armed with military-grade weapons and backed up by a Black Hawk helicopter, descended on the rural community of Postville, Iowa. They raided the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant and detained 389 workers, almost all of whom were Latino. Nine years later, Postville remains one of the most notorious immigration law enforcement actions in the nation’s recent history. While its legal implications have been well canvassed, the public health consequences of mass immigration policing actions like this have remained largely [...]

Reflections on a Donald Trump Presidency

By Linus Chan Bearing witness to sorrow, pain and injustice has always been part of the package deal of being an immigration attorney. Immigration law is diverse, rich and an example of how to define what our country's values are. Deciding who can be our neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and family often requires us to articulate our vision of the United States and how it is to remain a shining light on a hill. I represent non-citizens detained by immigration officials and who face removal from our country and exile from their homes and family. Many of my clients are those people [...]

Making the invisible visible inside Canada’s immigration detention regime

By Carrie Dawson In December 2013, Lucia Vega Jimenez, an undocumented Mexican national who worked as a chambermaid in Vancouver, was caught paying less than the full fare for a train ticket. The transit police turned her over to Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), the government body responsible for border security, who took her into custody. The day before she was scheduled to be deported, Jimenez hanged herself from a shower rod in the immigration detention center. She died one week later. In a newspaper interview, Yasmin Trejo, a friend of Jimenez’s, said, “Lucia ended up being [...]

The Demonization of “Criminal Aliens”

By Beth Caldwell In the context of the current presidential debate, the hate that invoking the term “criminal alien” evokes for a large segment of the U.S. population is tangible. In his immigration speech in Arizona, Donald Trump repeated the term “criminal alien” over and over again. Mike Pence followed suit in the October 4 vice presidential debate, using the term three times in a relatively brief response to a question about immigration policy. But the Trump campaign is not alone in invoking the “criminal alien” term. President Obama too has framed his immigration policies using this [...]