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Court Finds Federal Immigration Officials Violated Constitution in Detaining US Citizen
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A federal court has ruled that federal immigration officials and the state of Rhode Island violated the Constitution in detaining a U.S. citizen without probable cause while the federal government investigated her immigration status.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of Ada Morales, who was born in Guatemala and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1995. In 2009, when she was arrested by Rhode Island authorities for an unrelated state charge, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued an immigration hold against her. A judge had ordered her release, but the state Department of Corrections held her for an additional 24 hours solely because of the ICE detainer, and even after she repeatedly told officials she was a U.S. citizen and offered to show them her naturalization certificate and passport.
The detention, the ACLU lawsuit charged, violated her constitutional rights to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. In a strongly worded opinion issued today, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. agreed, writing that Morales’ “illegal detention revealed a dysfunction of constitutional proportion at both the state and federal levels and a unilateral refusal to take responsibility for the fact that a United States citizen lost her liberty due to a baseless immigration detainer through no fault of her own.” The judge also said the facts surrounding Morales’ unlawful detention “are disturbing on many levels” and “should concern all Americans.”
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of Ada Morales, who was born in Guatemala and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1995. In 2009, when she was arrested by Rhode Island authorities for an unrelated state charge, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued an immigration hold against her. A judge had ordered her release, but the state Department of Corrections held her for an additional 24 hours solely because of the ICE detainer, and even after she repeatedly told officials she was a U.S. citizen and offered to show them her naturalization certificate and passport.
The detention, the ACLU lawsuit charged, violated her constitutional rights to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. In a strongly worded opinion issued today, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. agreed, writing that Morales’ “illegal detention revealed a dysfunction of constitutional proportion at both the state and federal levels and a unilateral refusal to take responsibility for the fact that a United States citizen lost her liberty due to a baseless immigration detainer through no fault of her own.” The judge also said the facts surrounding Morales’ unlawful detention “are disturbing on many levels” and “should concern all Americans.”
https://www.aclu.org/news/court-finds-federal-immigration-officials-and-state-rhode-island-violated-constitution
