Calif. judge orders ICE to release criminal illegal immigrants from detention center despite no COVID-19 cases
Former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan reacts.
Lawyers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a federal court in Miami that it has “no basis” for any oversight of “ICE’s administration of its sound policies.”
The Miami Herald reported Monday that the agency’s response was to a recommendation by Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman who said earlier that the agency should prove that it is working to speed up the release of non-criminal detainees during the coronavirus pandemic.
Goodman wrote a 69-page report and determined that the court could not grant the petitioners’ request for an immediate release of the “1,400 noncitizen detainees,” but called on steps to be implemented to speed up the process, Law 360 reported.
Immigration rights activists say many of the facilities holding the detainees are unhygienic and put detainees at risk for infection. Goodman, according to the paper, called for the agency to provide evidence in the form of reports that would be submitted twice a week.
ICE RELEASING HUNDREDS DUE TO CORONAVIRUS RISK
The Herald reported that as of last week four detainees in the state tested positive and eight staff members.
Rebecca Sharpless, the director of the University of Miami School of Law’s Immigration Clinic, told Law 360 in an email that “judicial oversight is sorely needed” because these detainees live in “crowded conditions” where they eat and sleep “within less than six feet of one another.”
Lawyers for ICE said the court’s directive exceeds its jurisdiction.
“Such an order is unnecessarily broad, unduly burdensome and unwarranted,” the agency said in a filing Friday. The Herald pointed out that it said “a twice-weekly report would not yield more meaningful information than a report filed once every two weeks, or, at a minimum, once a week.”
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