By Sophia Yapalater

In many ways, Mark and Richard led parallel lives. Both men came to the United States as young children, Mark from South Korea and Richard from Jamaica. They both had status as legal permanent residents, attended school, and put down roots in their communities.

In their teenage years, both had minor run-ins with the law, as many teenagers do. Mark was convicted for marijuana possession, while Richard received a conviction related to a schoolyard fight at his high school. But both committed to reform, and they remained out of trouble since that time.

As adults, both were living comfortably. They had stable jobs – Mark ran a logistics and shipping company, while Richard was a Class-A truck driver – and were excitedly expecting children with their partners. Neither man had any inclination that incidents from their youth would have any effect on their immigration status. But, some 15 years later, both men were apprehended in their own homes by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without warning, charged as deportable based on these minor convictions, and incarcerated in an immigration detention center.

In general, our Constitution does not allow the government to lock people up unless, at a minimum, they are provided with a bond hearing to determine that their detention is necessary. However, in 1996, Congress passed a law requiring the mandatory detention of immigrants facing removal proceedings who had been convicted of virtually any crime. As a result, individuals like Mark and Richard found themselves locked up in immigration jails, without even an opportunity to demonstrate that they posed no danger or flight risk requiring their detention. Moreover, such detention can last for months, even years, depending on how long it takes for an immigration case to be decided.

Most people who are detained do not have attorneys, and have no idea when, or if, they will be released. One can only imagine what type of toll this uncertainty might take on someone's psyche. When I spoke to Mark, he told me that he felt so stuck that he almost signed voluntary deportation papers just to know that he was getting out, despite the fact that he had strong legal claims to remain in the United States and would be forced to return to a country he barely knew.

However, Mark was lucky to have been living in California. He was able to secure his release on bond after being detained for just six months, while Richard was locked up in immigration detention for over two years without a bond hearing.

Given their almost identical circumstances, it doesn't make sense that Mark and Richard had such starkly different detention experiences. Why would a person be detained for over two years without any opportunity for a bond hearing, missing the first two years of his child's life, while others are afforded this basic right? The answer lies in several important ACLU court victories that have helped restore some due process to the immigration detention system.

Most recently, in 2013, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in the ACLU class action Rodriguez v. Robbins that the government is required to provide bond hearings for certain detainees held for six months or longer. The implementation of the Rodriguez decision has proven the government can no longer justify its mandatory detention regime. For Mark, detained in Adelanto, California, this meant that an immigration judge was required to review his case before he was held any longer than six months. He was then released on bond back to his waiting family.

Mark finally reunited with his family after spending six months in detention. Read our report.

 

A report compiling government statistics reveals that of the hundreds of bond hearings conducted for Rodriguez class members, immigration judges have found that approximately 70 percent are eligible for release on bond. That number is astounding. The government claims that no detainee should even have the opportunity for a bond hearing, and yet when the government's own immigration judges are taking a look at the individual cases, they are finding that 70 percent can be released on bond.
Because the government continues its draconian policy of mandatory detention in states outside of the Ninth Circuit, thousands of immigrants like Richard, who was apprehended in Connecticut and detained in Massachusetts, continue to waste away unnecessarily behind bars – at great cost to them, their families, and the U.S. tax payer because of nothing more than judicial geography. The government continues to deny these people the most basic right that due process guarantees: a hearing before an immigration judge where the government must justify the need to detain them.

This is true regardless of how long they are detained, or whether they present any risk to the community. The system is unfair and unconstitutional, and it is incredibly expensive. There is no reason that the basic right to a bond hearing should turn on the happenstance of where you are detained. The Obama administration should help bring a measure of fairness to our broken detention system by adopting the Rodriguez six-month rule nationwide.

The statistics in the report simply confirm what we already knew from cases like Mark and Richard's – it's time to put an end to prolonged mandatory detention.

Sophia Yapalater works with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. Follow ACLU_SoCal.

The Fault In Our Stars (“TFIOS,” to fans) is a critically acclaimed, largely popular YA novel about two terminally-ill teenagers who fall in love. Business Week reported in April that “more than 7 million hardcover copies […] have circulated widely—among middle school English classes, from teen to tween, from child to parent to grandparent, and beyond.”

In the city of Riverside, a middle school librarian received so many requests for TFIOS from students interested in reading the book that she personally purchased four copies and donated them to the school library. But certain Riverside Unified School District administrators weren’t such fans of the book. The district’s materials reconsideration committee banned TFIOS from middle school libraries after a parent complained that the book depicted the love between the novel’s teen protagonists, Augustus and Hazel, in a “demeaning way.” (The parent also complained that the novel encouraged youth to think that it is socially acceptable for parents to be “uninvolved” in their children’s lives, because Hazel’s mother allows her to go to the movies without asking her who she is going with.)

In light of the parent’s complaints, the district committee decided that TFIOS should be banned because it is not “age appropriate” for middle school students. But plenty of middle schoolers in Riverside and across the country have read and appreciated the book. As one review says, the book is written “for youth, rather than to them, and the difference is palpable.”

So what does “age appropriate” really mean here? Too often, school officials ban books as unsuitable for certain age groups – not because the books are too difficult or complex for students of that age group to understand, but because they contain certain values or ideas that parents or school administrators wish to suppress. This kind of viewpoint discrimination violates the First Amendment, as courts have repeatedly held in cases like Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico and others.

In the case of Riverside Unified’s removal of The Fault In Our Stars, it is clear that the committee’s decision was meant to shield middle schoolers from particular ideas about various topics: appropriate parenting styles, teenage sexuality, the inevitability of death. Two different committee members opined that the book was not age appropriate because it would cause middle school students to think about "heavy" topics like cancer and death.

Parents and students who wish to discuss and read about real life issues like death and teenage sex should not have their First Amendment rights restricted simply because other parents find an author’s views on those topics frightening or unorthodox. As TFIOS author John Green ironically suggested on his tumblr, it is quite likely that many middle school-age youth have already started to think about mortality. After all, TFIOS was inspired by a girl who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 12.

TWEET: Spread the word and tell the Riverside Unified School District to #LiftTheBan on #TFIOS

 

The ACLU Foundation of Southern California and other organizations, such as the National Coalition Against Censorship, have written to Riverside Unified’s School Board to urge it to overturn the committee’s decision. And you can make your voice heard, too!

On Monday, December 8, the school board will be holding a public meeting to reconsider whether The Fault In Our Stars should be restored to the school library or remain banned from middle schools. We urge local residents and young fans of TFIOS to come out to the meeting to voice their thoughts and help us restore the book to library bookshelves.
 

RUSD School Board Public Session: 5:30 p.m. at Riverside Adult School, Board Room, 6735 Magnolia, Riverside, CA 92506
 

Adrienna Wong is staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. Follow ACLU_SoCal.

By Sarah Mehta

Nydia already had asylum in the United States when she was twice deported by border officers back to the danger she fled from. A transgender woman from Mexico, Nydia told officers she had status and had been raped and attacked in Mexico when she returned for her mother's funeral.

They deported her anyway, and she was kidnapped and raped again.

Each year, over 363, 279 – 83 percent – of deportations from the United States are ordered by immigration officers, not judges. Those deported in "summary removal" processes do not get a hearing or a chance to present evidence, or call a lawyer, or even say goodbye to their families before they are banished, sometimes for life. Our report released today, American Exile: Rapid Deportations That Bypass the Courtroom, shows the incredible costs to those we remove and to their families left behind when the rush to deport trumps due process.

Nydia, a transgender woman, was granted asylum in the United States after repeated physical and sexual attacks in Mexico. More

 

Two weeks ago, President Obama announced a plan that has the potential to protect more than four million non-citizens leading rooted lives in the United States without legal recognition. By announcing his executive action, President Obama helped millions of deserving undocumented residents, but failed to reform treatment of people caught at our border. Our border is not a line but, as understood by the Department of Homeland Security, a 100-mile ring into the United States.

And yet this space is treated completely differently, even for people with the exact same equities as those apprehended in the so-called "interior."

As we found in a year-long investigation and close to 200 interviews and case studies, many people arrested and deported in the border zone are not strangers at the gate: They include longtime residents and parents of U.S. citizens. Others are lawful residents or workers, deported during their daily commute when federal immigration law enforcement officers summarily extinguish their rights. And then there are children and families fleeing unfathomable violence and seeking protection in the United States. Deporting these individuals without a fair hearing and sometimes with catastrophic – if predictable – consequences violates our human rights obligations and defies who we want to be as a country.

Announcing his executive action program, President Obama said, "We didn't raise the Statue of Liberty with her back to the world; we did it with her light shining as a beacon to the world." But when asylum seekers reach our borders following that beacon, they and many others are deported quickly to danger, without a hearing, often after signing deportation forms they don't understand and in a language they don't speak.

In all of these situations, people are deported because immigration enforcement officers have incredible power and discretion that is used too often as a smokescreen to deny a person his or her rights. Immigration enforcement officers are not trained as lawyers; nor do they act as independent mediators. They are trained to arrest, detain, and deport – not to judge and authorize relief or to be fluent in some of the most complicated law in the United States.

But these deportation orders, which you'd think need more review and oversight, receive almost none – far less than a deportation order issued by a judge after evidence, testimony, and legal review. Getting illegal deportation orders reviewed and expunged is virtually impossible. And review can be too little, too late, when people are deported back into harm's way.

Individuals like Nydia who already have rights in the United States must rely on border officers to believe them, to listen and to care about their rights and claims. Some CBP officials do their jobs well, but a significant proportion is acting – intentionally or not – contrary to U.S. laws that protect American families and refugees. Giving people a real chance to defend their rights and to present claims in court would restore some integrity to our broken immigration system, putting justice—not expedience—first.

Sarah Mehta is a researcher at the ACLU's Human Rights Program. Follow ACLU_SoCal.