6 allowed to pursue claims against ICE
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 6:17 AM EST
By Mary E. O’Leary, Register Topics Editor
The New Haven Register
Immigration Judge Michael Straus recently issued a split decision in court challenges brought by 17 immigrants who charged that their arrests last year by federal agents were unconstitutional.
Straus, in an oral ruling, found that six of the 17 immigrants have made a prima facie case that constitutional violations took place, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have to testify under oath about the raids last summer.
Lawyers at the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale University are seeking to suppress evidence obtained by ICE when it arrested a total of 32 people in New Haven and North Haven in June 2007.
They allege that the officers conducted illegal searches and seizures, detained the 32 without reasonable suspicion and arrested them without probable cause.
Yale Law professor Michael Wishnie said Straus has ordered government attorneys to tell him on Feb. 12 which ICE agents will be testifying.
The government, in several hearings this fall, argued against calling ICE agents to testify, as unnecessary. ICE spokeswoman Paula Greiner Monday said it would be improper for her to comment at this point, as the case is still before Straus.
Wishnie said shifting the burden to ICE to justify its actions is unusual in immigration courts, although it has been happening more frequently since the federal government stepped up enforcement of immigration law since 2006.
One of the six immigrants before Straus, whose case will now get a more extensive hearing, lived on Fillmore Street, while another was arrested on the street; the four remaining men resided at 200 Peck St.
Wishnie said Straus will now hold departure hearings for 10 of the 11 remaining cases, at which point he said the men will seek voluntary departure, rather than a departure order by the government.
Voluntary departure makes it easier to seek legal entry at a later date, but in either situation, Wishnie said the men will appeal Straus’s rulings on the constitutional issues to the Board of Immigration Appeal. If they lose there, they will take their cases to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
The appeal process is a lengthy one. In an earlier case taken by the Yale lawyers, deportation orders issued by Straus in February 2008 against nine immigrants arrested in Danbury are still in the briefing stage before the BIA.
The last of the 17 people heard by Straus in Hartford, a woman, claims she was a victim of domestic violence in her native country, and she will seek asylum in an April hearing before Straus.
http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/01/27/news/a3-neice.txt
