The Obama administration has been ordered to give immigrants bail hearings if they've been detained in the L.A. area for more than six months. That's fair.
U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. last week ordered the Obama administration to provide bail hearings for certain immigrants who have been detained in Southern California for more than six months to determine whether their continued detention is warranted. Hatter's decision is a welcome development that could help restore some much-needed fairness to the troubled detention system. We hope the administration accepts the court's ruling.
Clearly the federal government has the authority to detain and deport immigrants who violate the law, but it also has a responsibility to ensure that those immigrants are not subject to excessive, prolonged incarceration; they deserve the opportunity to be considered for bail. The problem is that as the U.S. moves to detain record numbers of immigrants, the judicial review that used to be provided to those immigrants has decreased. Unlike criminal defendants who are guaranteed a bail hearing before a judge within days, detainees fighting to remain in the U.S. are not guaranteed a similar hearing before an immigration judge.
Some critics will undoubtedly argue that Hatter's ruling undermines a rigid 1996 law's no-bail provision, under which federal authorities must detain asylum-seekers who arrive at the border and immigrants who have committed certain crimes, including minor drug offenses, while their deportation cases are pending. Such claims are specious. The 1996 law covered only brief detention; the new court ruling, by contrast, guarantees a bond hearing to immigrants who have spent more than six months locked up. Moreover, immigration judges can still refuse to release anyone they believe poses a threat to the community or is considered a flight risk. And immigration authorities can require anyone released to wear an electronic ankle monitor to ensure that he or she shows up to court.
What Hatter's decision will do is establish a safeguard to prevent immigrants from languishing in detention unfairly and indefinitely. Consider the case of Alejandro Rodriguez, a legal permanent resident who spent three years in detention fighting his deportation. During that time he never received a bail hearing. He was eventually released after civil rights groups sued the government, and he has since won his deportation case.
The Obama administration has vowed to make the immigration detention system more humane and less punitive. We hope federal officials seize this opportunity to fulfill that promise.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-detainees-bail-hearings-20120921,0,2924948.story

By Jason Howe, Director of Communications
Did you hear on the news about the mass exodus of a half-million troops from the U.S. military?

No? Well then, you must have heard about gay soldiers causing their comrades to desert their units just as an attack was most imminent.
No? You know what? I didn’t either.
A year to the day after the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) followed the Gatling gun, the trebuchet and the cavalry charge into the military history books, nothing has changed -- nothing, that is, other than soldiers taking partners to military dances, tearful same-sex reunions, and other images of lesbian and gay troops serving their country openly and proudly.
According to a study released today by the Palm Institute, “the repeal of DADT has had no overall negative impact on military readiness or its component dimensions, including cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment or morale.”
No overall negative impact. Service members report no drop in unit cohesion or military readiness, the repeal has had no effect on recruitment, and that mass exodus of troops? It never happened.
Not that any of this is deterring those who opposed the repeal in the first place, among them Sen. John McCain, Michelle Bachman and the Family Research Council. The report says that as news spread that the earth had not yawned open to swallow the Pentagon, opponents “have adjusted their forecasts by emphasizing the possibility of long-term damage that will only become apparent in the future.” Disgraced former Marine and Fox News host Oliver North said that repealing the policy was akin to treating troops like “rats in a radical social experiment.” GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney last year said during a Republican debate that “I believe that "don't ask/don't tell" should have been kept in place until conflict was over.”
That’s why the battle won’t stay won if we don’t stay vigilant. Even though the repeal isn’t an issue for most Americans and -- more importantly -- isn’t an issue for troops themselves, opponents of LGBT equality remain entrenched. That’s because they remember the last time the military became a front in the fight for civil rights -- following World War Two, when African Americans finally could serve alongside whites -- and the social barriers that fell in the decades that followed. They know that once you’ve risked your life alongside someone, it’s difficult to deny him or her basic civil rights.