Virginia’s Legal Aid Justice Center is busier than ever, defending people who have been arrested and detained by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.
Attorney Elizabeth Schmelzel argued for a political refugee – an artist from South Asia fleeing violence from Islamic fundamentalists.
He had obeyed all U.S. laws in seeking asylum but was arrested and imprisoned at the immigrant detention center in Farmville.
“The judge found that he was not a danger or a flight risk, and she actually ordered the lowest possible bond under the law,” Schmelzel recalls.
The man was prepared to pay $1,500 to get out, but ICE said it would appeal. Relying on a 9-11-era regulation, never approved by Congress, it ordered the man remain behind bars and claimed most non-citizens have no right to bond.
Schmelzel disagreed, citing the U.S. Constitution.
“Which says that all people are entitled to due process. It doesn’t say citizen, resident. It doesn’t say man, it doesn’t say white person. It says all people. Clearly people in immigration proceedings do have due process rights.”
The Legal Aid Justice Center and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights took the matter to a federal court where the judge ruled in their favor.
“Where attorneys are getting into federal court on habeas petitions, we are seeing a fair bit of success, which suggests to me that when the judicial branch looks closely at what’s happening in immigration, they are not pleased.”
But things aren’t changing fast enough to protect people like her client, who served 37 more days behind bars after a judge had ordered him freed on bond.
“He told me just on Sunday when we talked, he said ‘Mentally, I’m still in detention.’ When he sees anyone in uniform, he is incredibly frightened.”
Meanwhile, she says, the backlog of immigration cases is growing – surpassing three million, and many people are jailed without trial.
“The government is not targeting anybody. They’re targeting everybody. The biggest increase in ICE detention is people with no criminal record, so the idea that this approach to immigration enforcement keeps us safer is simply not borne out by the data.”
And there’s a shortage of lawyers who are able to help immigrants at little or no cost.
“Most people in a detention center don’t have a lawyer at all.”
What’s more, most attorneys practice in big cities.
“So my client who was detained in the Farmville Detention Center – well that’s about five hours from my house.”
She adds that the administration has been firing immigration judges.
“An immigration judge shows up to work. They get an e-mail. You are no longer employed by the Department of Justice. We have had judges dismissed in the middle of a case, and now – suddenly – you’re before a different judge who has no background in the case, and the case is pushed back of course.”
To address the problem, the justice department has proposed drafting military judges into service – men and women who are unlikely to have background in immigration law.
