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ICE held an American man in custody for 1,273 days. He’s not the only one
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoIs one allowed to speak to a lawyer in these circumstances? Or do those protections not apply? Does one simple disappear to one's loved ones? > Carrillo sued for false imprisonment and was awarded a $20,000 settlement, but ICE made no admission of wrongdoing This is a shockingly small sum.
- robolange 8y agoIf I recall correctly, immigration in the US is considered a civil, not criminal matter, so there is no right to an attorney if you cannot afford one.
- morganvachon 8y agoIt's a civil matter but you are detained in criminal jails and prisons until the court can get around to listening to you. That in itself is criminal, and what one would expect from a third world banana republic, not a first world "free" country.
- muzz 8y agoMy understanding is that right to an attorney is not a thing when it comes to immigration cases (even when the authorities are mistaken as they were here). https://cis.org/Feere/Detained-Immigrants-and-Right-Counsel https://cis.org/Feere/Detained-Immigrants-and-Right-Counsel
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> right to an attorney is not a thing when it comes to immigration cases Wow, that's scary. Has this been recently challenged?
- olliej 8y agoNo. Literally any non citizen (or person ice decides is not one) can be held indefinitely without having a lawyer.
- nerfhammer 8y agoAFAICT it's illegal for ICE to incorrectly decide you are not a US citizen. If they made a mistake in their determination then they have violated the law. So citizens don't have a right to a lawyer because immigration law doesn't apply to US citizens. But if ICE is wrong they should get sued to hell and back and this penalty seems horrifying low for 3.5 years of wrongful imprisonment.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hedora 8y agoIf you read to the end, you’ll see the government didn’t let him keep the settlement, since they only give you two years from the date of the arrest to sue, which he couldn’t do, since he was still in custody. I’d expect minimum statutory damages for this sort of thing to be north of $10K / day, paid up front, and garnished from ICE’s payroll budget. However, I don’t make the rules.
- throwawaylalala 8y agoI’d then sue them for illegal detainment for every day illegally detained....
- candiodari 8y agoOk ... that sounds so cool. You would fail. You see, there is a slight problem. The government has legislated that this does not happen. And it doesn't happen. The only thing that can happen is that government employees do something they did not have the legal right to do, by abusing state power (unknown to them). For this they are ... personally liable. Gotta love what happens when you give people the authority to make the rules, don't you ? Such reasonable rules ... So a judge has 2 choices (in most states): Either he ignores you or gives you some token amount without making a big fuss out of it, for some bullshit reason (not for illegally detaining you, but for some bullshit but legal reason like illegally charging you some fee or something). The other choice a judge has is to hold the people who actually did this personally liable ... and assigns real monetary damages. Not on the government, as the government explicitly forbade them from doing this, on the individuals. This will open those individuals to a slam-shut kidnapping case, which if the victim plays it correctly will lead to them receiving prison sentences. They cannot claim they didn't do it, because it's part of another court case's conclusion that they did it, including that it was illegal. So a judge can either almost ignore you, or utterly destroy the lives of some 20 government employees that just did what they were told to do. At this point, you have to understand, those government employees' lives are utterly destroyed: they are very likely to go to jail, they'll have 6 or 7 figures in debt (enough to almost certainly lose all their possessions), garnished wages for a decade at least and can never work for government again (in other words, on top of everything else, they're fired from their job). A reasonable person would say that a judge needs a third option: a way to tell the government that they fucked up lawmaking, assign damages based on that, and that laws need to come with clear details on what to do. That a rule like "no citizen may be arrested" must come with a clear and foolproof way to distinguish citizens from non-citizens to be valid, but judges are explicitly forbidden from doing this (you might even say the very definition of their job is to NEVER do this). Why are the rules like this ? Government, the big exception to employer responsibility ? To save the government a buck. Needless to say, unless there was a daily rape regimen, a judge will not do this. Frankly, even then it's probably not a reasonable thing to do.
- nerfhammer 8y agoThat only applies to actual illegal aliens. If you are a US citizen immigration has no legal right to detain or arrest you. "As a matter of law, ICE cannot assert its civil immigration enforcement authority to arrest and/or detain a U.S. citizen." https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/when-ice-tries-to-deport-americans-who-defends-them https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/when-ice-tries-... If my very limited understanding of this is correct, this is a perfect real-life example of a Catch-22: citizens have no right to an attorney if arrested by immigration because immigration cannot legally arrest citizens.
- ComputerGuru 8y agoRight. But all they have to do is “have reason” to “doubt” your claim to be an American citizen. Or say you’re not the person you’re claiming to be, who they freely admit is an American citizen. Or claim that your citizenship is invalid because it was obtained via deception (which is now a thing).
- tonyztan 8y ago> "claim that your citizenship is invalid because it was obtained via deception" This cannot be simply asserted by ICE. To revoke naturalized citizenship, the government must initiate denaturalization proceedings in U.S. District Court in front of an Article III judge.
- gizmo686 8y agoIf my knowledge of history is correct, slaves in the US had to right to sue, unless they were sueing to claim that they were not actually slaves; since, until the court decided the suit, it was possible that they were not actually slaves, and so they had to be given the right to be heard in court.
- DrScump 8y ago"ICE cannot assert its civil immigration enforcement authority..." But ICE also has criminal enforcement authority, where applicable.
- brisance 8y agoBut surely as an American citizen on US soil his Sixth Amendment rights should apply?
- danShumway 8y agoWell... that's the question. It doesn't matter if you're actually a citizen. If the government refuses to admit your citizenship, how do you get them to admit your rights apply? I would love to get more clarification on this as well. It seems to me that if there is doubt about your citizenship, we should lean towards better safe than sorry and just grant you a lawyer, period. The US justice system is (ostensibly, if not always in practice) based on the idea that protecting innocent people is more important than punishing guilty people. If you're being tried to see if you're a citizen, I would prefer we assume you're innocent until proven guilty and grant you a lawyer. Is the reality as bad as people are suggesting? Is there some kind of reasoning behind this?
- ojbyrne 8y agoThe Bill of Rights isn’t just for citizens, most of it (including the 6th amendment) applies to anyone on American soul.
- sneak 8y agoLegally I have no idea what the government claims applies or does not, but reading the declaration it seems pretty clear that the founders had the still-radical notion that most/all of these fundamental rights apply to all people ("men", in the text, and "[white] men" in practice). There wasn't even such a thing as "American" when it was written. If the US thinks the bill of rights should only apply to citizens of the US, the US is morally bankrupt.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agodeleted
- chc 8y agoI don't see what guarantees of due process and other human rights have to do with libertarianism. I'm pretty sure that (just to use a politically distant example) your average socialist would also view this as something the government shouldn't be able to do.
- jessaustin 8y agoAnarchism is the proper response to all of these abuses.
- scottie_m 8y agoAnarchism is the proper response to all of these abuses. In the same way that your car breaking down means you should abandon it forever and just walk everywhere you want to go. It’s also a good idea, if you ever get food poisoning, to just stop eating forever. It’s never a good idea to try and fix what’s wrong, just throw it all away.
- thatcat 8y agoRejecting one form of organization doesn't preclude all future organization.
- mattkrause 8y agoIsn’t that basically the definition of anarchy?
- thatcat 8y agoAnarchy means without leaders [0]. There are many types of anarchism that have a flat hierarchic structure and could still be considered organizations. What parent was suggesting is closer to nihilism, which is a common misunderstanding because in films anarchism is generally portrayed as nihilism[1]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy#Etymology [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism
- nextweek2 8y agoIt was $20,000 for 4 days detention. That sounds proportional to me.
- archgoon 8y agoBrief math reminder, 1273 days is over three years, which is a shockingly long time for the result to simply be "Oh, here's 20k. Not that we did anything wrong.".
- imrehg 8y agoIt is worse than that - he got nothing. > After Watson was freed, he sued the government for false imprisonment and won an $82,500 judgment. Then a federal appeals court took it away, ruling that while Watson was in detention he missed the two-year deadline to file his claim.
- archgoon 8y agoYou are correct. The $20,000 sum comes from a different individual who was only imprisoned for 4 days.
- UncleEntity 8y ago> ...ruling that while Watson was in detention he missed the two-year deadline to file his claim. Kafka would be proud methinks...
- rgbrenner 8y agoIf you want to read the reasoning behind it, this is the appeals ruling: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Watson2nd.pdf https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Wa...
- arthur_pryor 8y agoadd to that the way they let him go: > Surprised by his unexplained freedom, Watson walked out of a federal detention center in rural Alabama. He recalled how he was penniless, in prison garb and thousands of miles from home when he approached strangers at a gas station to borrow a phone.
- donttrack 8y agoHe should have gone to McDonalds and spilled Coffee in his crotch instead...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- forapurpose 8y agoLawyers: Don't these detainees have a habeas corpus claim, which, as I understand it, compels the government to justify detention? Isn't this kind of situation the intended 'use case' for habeas?
- conanbatt 8y agoI think it works differently for immigration. The show Adam Ruins everything explains how minors of age that dont speak english dont have lawyers and go to court alone...
- tonyztan 8y agoIANAL, but if ICE actually detained a U.S. citizen, wouldn't the citizen have the right to file a habeas petition regardless of the "immigration" nature of detention?
- conanbatt 8y agoI'm sure the saavy dont get caught by ICE, but americans have been actually deported so maybe they are not encouraged or prevented from doing so. (if they dont get assigned a public defender for example).
- nerfhammer 8y agobut you would in practice need a lawyer to know about all that stuff and how to use it, which is the problem in the first place
- oh_sigh 8y agoIt seems like this was not a mistake in identifying him as a citizen - there was a question if he was legally a citizen: > Even after ICE realized the error in identifying his parents, federal lawyers refused to free Watson. They seized on a new U.S. reading of Jamaican law to argue Watson should be deported because his father was not his legal guardian when they left the island nation. ... > An immigration judge ordered him deported. The Board of Immigration Appeals agreed. >It was only when Watson’s appeal reached U.S. District Court and a court-appointed attorney pressed ICE that immigration authorities conducted the internal legal review they should have done when Watson first claimed to be a citizen. The review found the government had misinterpreted an arcane aspect of immigration law. ICE abruptly freed Watson. Were his attorneys just incompetent before?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rectang 8y agoNaturally this offends anyone who cares about the rule of law. But does the rule of law matter in today's America? What's the point of discussing the finer technicalities of law if they don't lead you to a solution?
- jumelles 8y agoICE needs to be completely torn down and replaced.
- realandreskytt 8y agoBut, God forbid, we issue people identifiers and keep a full tally of the citizens. You either have a proper identity management or stories like this (and identity theft and fraud and many other unpleasant things). It is the conscious choice of the society not to maintain proper records for the fear of overreach and these are the consequences.
- gumby 8y ago> for the fear of overreach Yet if any organization uses overreach as a fundamental tactic it is ICE (along with DEA and NSA). I am no fan of conspiracy theories and in fact am typically favorable towards using government as an implementation of common policy, yet I can certainly also recognize a systems problem.
- tluyben2 8y agoMaybe someone can clear this up; when I get into the US on vacation, my fingerprints and iris are stored. Then when I walk from the plane to customs there are a ton of cameras, they scan my passport (which has biometric info and my photo), then they take a photo of me. This is not the same for citizens? I would imagine it would be quite easy to figure out who is who with all that info? If Americans never fly, do they not have biometrics on these people?
- Trill-I-Am 8y agoCitizens never have to offer biometrics besides photographs and possibly some kind of deeper facial scan upon reentry from abroad to fly.
- tluyben2 8y agoSo why not? As it seems to solve these issues? I can see the downsides but this seems pretty bad?
- sitkack 8y ago> Carrillo’s arrest highlights pitfalls in ICE’s digitally driven search for the deportable. At the core of the hunt are massive federal databases containing records on citizenship, crime, foreign travel, education and work. ICE should not be using these databases for this purpose. This is a really low quality way to do police work. The amount of water you need to pump through the baleen to get a meal has to be enormous and foreign key relationships will be some substring match. Using these databases as the source of the crime will be so rife with errors as to be unethical. This is not unlike the famous case, Buttle vs Tuttle [0] [0] https://youtu.be/nWbIxFKtTmE?t=91 https://youtu.be/nWbIxFKtTmE?t=91