ACLU Comment on Trump Pardon of Joe Arpaio

NEW YORK – The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the Trump administration plans to deploy military troops to Chicago against a made-up crime wave. President Trump has also renewed his threats to deploy troops in Baltimore, San Francisco, and New York City, despite state governors’ objections. This comes amidst news that some National Guard troops in D.C. are now armed and, separately, that 19 states are planning to mobilize up to 1,700 of their National Guard troops in the coming weeks to assist the Department of Homeland Security’s drive to detain and deport millions of people. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project: “President Trump is manufacturing ‘emergencies’ to expand his power and create fear in major American cities. Regardless of whether the president cites false crime statistics, villainizes immigrants, or claims peaceful protest is insurrection, sending armed federal agents and military troops into our communities is unjustified and dangerous. “President Trump’s escalating threats directly undermine our foundational value that the military should not be policing civilians, create legal jeopardy for servicemembers and federal agents, and put regular people going about their lives at high risk of having their rights violated. Governors and other state and local leaders must stay strong and take all lawful measures to protect their residents against the president’s repeated attempts to intimidate us.”

BALTIMORE — This morning, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested at his ICE check-in appointment. The government intends to deport him to Uganda, a country with which Abrego Garcia has no association. Abrego Garcia is represented by lawyers at CASA, who hosted a vigil and rally in his support outside the location of the arrest. Earlier this year, the Trump administration – by its own admission – wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a torture prison in El Salvador in the middle of the night and with no due process. According to his lawyers, he suffered severe mistreatment there including isolation, beatings and psychological torture. After repeated court orders to return him, the administration finally brought him back but then immediately prosecuted him on federal smuggling charges. On Friday, over the administration’s objections, a federal court released him to his family in Maryland while his case proceeded. However, the government has now tried to force Abrego Garcia to accept deportation to Costa Rica as part of a plea agreement to end his criminal case. As punishment for not accepting that proposal, they then served notice to his lawyers that the administration will deport him to Uganda. Today, he was arrested during his ICE check-in. Sarah Mehta, Deputy Director of Policy and Government Affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, released the following statement in response: “The Trump administration’s obsessive and petty cruelty is on full display in this latest move to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father they admitted to wrongfully deporting to a torture prison, to a country with which he has no relationship. This vindictive behavior is not just about Mr. Abrego Garcia; this is once again the administration showing that it can weaponize the law to punish people standing up for their rights and make our immigrant neighbors afraid of being rapidly exiled, including to places where they may be persecuted.”

FORT MYERS, Fla.— Immigrants’ rights advocates filed a federal lawsuit Friday evening challenging Florida’s authority to detain people at the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center, a hastily constructed facility in the middle of the Everglades, which is surrounded by alligators, snakes, mosquitos, and swampland at risk of dangerous flooding. The case focuses on the state’s expansive and unlawful use of 287(g) agreements to assert independent state control over immigration detainees, which is still at issue after yesterday’s court ruling ending transfers of people to the facility. The lack of authority to operate the facility has resulted in unprecedented challenges that people in immigration detention typically do not face, including being held without charge, not receiving initial custody or bond determinations, not appearing in the detainee locator system, and not being able to access their attorneys or immigration court. The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida, Community Justice Project, and National Immigrant Justice Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of people detained at the Everglades facility. The 287(g) program allows individual state and local officers to help with a narrow set of immigration enforcement tasks, subject to rigorous training and close supervision by federal officials. It does not allow them to set up their own independent detention operations. And it does not let state officers sub-delegate immigration authority to private contractors who do not and cannot participate in the 287(g) program. Florida officers are also acting without adequate training in the many complex facets of immigration law. Many are only spending a few hours online, compared to equivalent federal officers who receive multiple weeks of in person training. These unprecedented violations of the 287(g) statute have immediately led to a host of real-world problems. Physical conditions at the facility are atrocious and dangerous. Detainees are going “off the grid” and being taken out of the normal systems for immigration detention and removal proceedings. Congress required the Department of Homeland Security to maintain custody of immigration detainees, and it imposed tight limits on the 287(g) program, precisely to avoid these kinds of problems. “This facility has already become a disaster in the first few weeks of its operations, with mounting reports of disease, wrongful removals, and people being denied all kinds of basic rights. This is exactly why Congress did not allow states to set up their own immigration facilities. The government needs to follow the law when people’s lives and liberties are at stake. It’s time for this failed experiment to end,” said Spencer Amdur, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel. “Florida has wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to unlawfully detain people in this abusive immigration detention center. Not only have the conditions been abhorrent, but the detention itself is unlawful. People are being held without charge, cut off from their attorneys, and made invisible in the immigration system. Families cannot even find out where their loved ones are. This is a crisis created entirely by the state’s reckless decision to ignore federal law and invent its own immigration jail in the middle of the Everglades. The harm being inflicted on our clients is immediate and irreparable, and it underscores why states are not allowed to overstep into federal immigration processes,” said Amy Godshall, legal fellow and immigrants’ rights attorney with the ACLU of Florida. “Our immigrant communities have always been right about this: We are Floridians, too, and deserve the same respect, compassion and due process as anyone else in this state. Florida’s authoritarian experiment cannot continue unchecked, and we are confident the court will see that there is no lawful authority for Florida to operate this immigration facility,” said Miriam Haskell, senior attorney and director of litigation at Community Justice Project. “It is truly unprecedented for a state to claim authority to operate its own, independent immigration detention system. The lack of accountability and resulting deprivation at this remote and inhumane detention camp in the Florida Everglades is exactly why Congress has made it unlawful and directed only the federal government to have custody over noncitizens as they go through the immigration system,” said Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center. The complaint is here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/m-a-v-guthrie-complaint