Ada Morales is a naturalized U.S. citizen who has been erroneously detained by Rhode Island law enforcement officials on immigration detainers not once, but twice—first in July 2004, and again in May 2009. Her lawsuit arises out of her 2009 imprisonment.

Gonzalez v. ICE is a proposed class action lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), brought by two U.S. citizens—Gerardo Gonzalez and Simon Chinivizyan—who were subjected to ICE detainers while in custody in Los Angeles County. The lawsuit challenges ICE’s practice of lodging detainers—and thereby causing people’s extended detention—without a probable cause determination, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. 

In December 2010, the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project filed suit in an Allentown, PA federal court on behalf of Ernesto Galarza, a New Jersey-born U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent who was held illegally for three days in the Lehigh County Prison. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents requested his detention on the baseless assertion that he might be an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic. 

In October 2012, the ACLU of Southern California, the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project, and other partners filed a major class-action lawsuit against Los Angeles County and Sheriff Lee Baca, challenging their practice of detaining people and denying them bail based solely on immigration detainers.