ACLU Reacts to President Trump’s Federalizing National Guard Troops in Response to Protests

Riverside, CA —Last night, immigrants’ rights advocates filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to strike down a new policy enacted by ICE ending bond eligibility for immigrants currently detained by the agency. If the new policy – issued on July 8th – is to continue, tens of thousands of immigrants would be jailed indefinitely while their immigration cases are considered for months or years on end. The new policy takes away immigrants’ ability to seek release on bond, regardless of whether they have been living in the United States for years, and regardless of whether they have any criminal record. This filing amends an existing habeas petition filed on behalf of plaintiffs unlawfully detained in the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in southern California, who were denied consideration for bond by ICE and immigration judges in the Adelanto Immigration Court. The district court issued an order yesterday requiring that they be granted a bond hearing within 7 days. The plaintiffs now seek to represent a nationwide class of individuals subject to the ICE policy, as well as a class of individuals denied bond hearings by the Adelanto Immigration Court. The plaintiffs and proposed classes are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and attorneys Niels Frenzen and Jean Reisz. “This detention policy blatantly violates the immigration laws that have been in effect for almost thirty years,” said Matt Adams, legal director for Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. “Our clients are standing up on behalf of themselves and thousands of others like them, who have lived in this country with their families for years, and are entitled to individual custody determinations.” “The Constitution guarantees all persons within the boundaries of the United States rights to equal due process under the law, full stop,” said Michael Tan, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “The Trump Administration seeks to rewrite our Constitutional bedrock, denying millions of immigrants in cruel detention facilities the ability to seek bond. With one memo, ICE hopes to keep people away from their families for months – or even years – before their cases are even heard.” The advocates challenge the government’s attempt to override the immigration laws and regulations, which provide the right to request release on bond, deny fundamental rights to due process, and arbitrarily reverse decades of policy and practice of providing bond hearings. Noncitizens present within the United States have Constitutional rights, and the Due Process Clause applies to all “persons” within the United States, including undocumented immigrants. Denying eligibility to bail for these detainees and depriving them of a hearing to determine whether they are a flight risk or danger to others, violate these same rights. “Indefinitely detaining people—especially but not exclusively those who have lived in this country for many years—is not only cruel, it’s against the law,” said Eva Bitrán, director of immigrants’ rights and senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “This case seeks to vindicate the principle that people in our government's custody deserve an opportunity to be heard about whether their continued detention is lawful.” According to the complaint, ICE has adopted the position that noncitizens who entered the United States without admission are ineligible for immigration court bond hearings, despite federal courts’ continued rulings that immigration laws and the Constitution provide for such hearings. “The Government’s no bond policy is a new component of the Administration’s mass immigration enforcement practice which is unlawful under the immigration laws and the constitution and, if not stopped, will result in thousands of additional people being detained in for-profit immigration prisons for extended periods of time,” said co-counsels Niels W. Frenzen and Jean Reisz.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced it will began using Fort Dix, a U.S. Army installation that is part of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in South New Jersey, to hold potentially thousands of people while ICE attempts to deport them. This is another disturbing expansion of the Trump administration's use of the military domestically and its rapid build out of immigration detention, coming on the heels of the newly-passed budget reconciliation bill's $170 billion to turbocharge deportations and detention. While the military base will initially hold 1,000 immigrants, the Department of Defense has reportedly approved an expansion to detain up to 3,000 immigrants. The Department of Defense has reportedly also agreed to allow the Department of Homeland Security to use its bases to detain 400 immigrants at the infamous Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, at least 1,000 at Camp Atterbury in Indiana, and 5,000 at Fort Bliss in Texas. Media reports also indicate that the Trump administration will deploy 2,000 National Guard troops to ICE detention centers nationwide – including at military bases. For months Trump has been setting the stage to repurpose the military domestically as part of his own deportation force. Sarah Mehta, deputy director of policy and government affairs for the Equality Division at the ACLU, issued the following statement in response: “President Trump’s use of military bases for his cruel deportation drive is as disgraceful as it is reckless. Detention camps on military bases harken to some of the worst chapters of American history, including Japanese internment, and are a total affront to the values of this country. "President Trump’s personal deportation force is now roping in the armed forces. Detaining immigrants on military bases will only make it more difficult to access lawyers and see family members. ICE detention camps are already notorious for violating detainees’ due process rights; these cruel practices should not extend to Fort Dix or other ‘novel’ detention sites. Members of Congress stop the use of the military – including its bases – for the Trump administration’s cruel immigration practices."

SAN DIEGO — A federal court in California again found the Trump administration breached the settlement agreement stemming from the American Civil Liberties Union’s family separation lawsuit. At issue is the administration’s sudden termination of two contracts guaranteeing legal and social services to clients covered in the 2023 agreement. The ACLU filed a motion in April after the Trump administration abruptly notified the Acacia Center for Justice, the main contractor that oversees the legal services program serving those clients, that it did not intend to renew its contract. On June 10, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California, ordered the government to reinstate its contract with Acacia so the organization can provide the required legal services under the settlement. He stressed that the Trump administration cannot “just simply disregard” a settlement the U.S. government agreed to. Late yesterday, the judge rejected the administration’s request to evade that ruling, and also found a second major breach by the government when it abruptly terminated its contract with Seneca Family of Agencies, which provides social services to the separated families, without securing any replacement contract. In this latest ruling, the judge wrote that the Trump administration “forced the separation of thousands of immigrant parents from their children, many of whom have yet to be reunified, and it caused profound, devastating, and lasting damage to those families.” The settlement agreement, he wrote, was the result of “painstaking negotiations” aimed to “address that damage” done to these families under the policy. The judge reiterated the policy was “one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” and again ordered the government to stop breaching the agreement and adhere to the settlement terms. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, lead counsel in the family separation lawsuit, had the following reaction: “Rather than acknowledge the horrible abuses inflicted by the family separation policy, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to avoid its responsibilities under the settlement. Fortunately, the court has squarely told the administration, for the second time in six weeks, it cannot simply walk away from its obligations.” The ruling is here.