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In my forty one years of practicing immigration law, I have observed many trends both favorable and unfavorable to aliens and their due process rights granted by the Constitution of the United States and the Civil Rights Act. In the past few months I have observed a disturbing trend following the implementation of the law in Davidson County known as §287 (g) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which allows the Metro Police and Sheriff Departments to check the immigration status of people who have been arrested even for the lowest misdemeanors and place “immigration holds” on them. Due to raids by the Sheriff’s departments in Columbia and Murfreesboro and probably with Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents through the country, more and more aliens, particularly those of Hispanic origins, need to be aware of the law with regards to interrogation, detention and removal proceedings. On February 13, 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law held a hearing in Washington D.C. entitled "Problems with ICE interrogation, detention, and removal procedures." Multiplying immigration raids across the country, the dramatic expansion of immigration detention, and the lack of any safety valve to allow non-citizens to remain in the U.S. legally has created a system rife with abuse. We commend the Department of Homeland Security for implementing a series of reforms to ensure non-citizens in its custody are treated humanely including the issuance of humanitarian guidelines for large worksite raids and recent directives supporting the favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion in cases where nursing mothers, sole caregivers and others merit release from detention. While the issuance of this guidance is an important first step toward ensuring fair and humane treatment, the hearing highlighted the need to ensure the Department's guidance is consistently followed by DHS officials in the field. We encourage DHS to work collaboratively with Congress to implement additional reforms that will ensure detainees and individuals encountered during raids are treated humanely including enhanced training requirements and the issuance of regulations regarding the treatment of detainees. We should all be deeply concerned about testimony at the hearing regarding humanitarian and civil rights abuses against detainees. Specifically, inadequate due process protections in our current system and a failure by the federal government to guarantee the protections of current law have led to the following troubling developments during recent ICE enforcement actions: U.S. citizens, the mentally ill, children and other vulnerable individuals who should not be in ICE custody have been mistakenly detained. Both legal residents and U.S. citizens report having been approached by immigration officials during worksite and residential raids on the basis of their race or ethnicity. ICE officials have allegedly entered private homes in some residential raids without a warrant and questioned individuals about their immigration status. Mothers responsible for caring for their small children reportedly have been detained and transferred to detention facilities thousands of miles away from their families. Detainees have been transferred away from their attorneys in countless cases making it difficult to defend themselves in court. In Davidson County some of the cases have been transferred to a small jail in Alabama and then to the Federal Detention Facility in Oakdale, Louisiana due to the higher expense charged to ICE in Davidson County than that of a small jail in Alabama. If you, your friends or relatives come under any of these categories you should contact an attorney who has experience in immigration court cases rather than a notary public as notary publics are not licensed to practice law in the State of Tennessee or any other State. Writen by H. Fred Ford, Sr.
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