News & Commentary

By Carmen Iguina and Michael Kaufman This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s declaration in Gideon v. Wainwright that the Constitution guarantees indigent criminal defendants the right to appointed counsel. The Supreme Court described a “noble ideal” of “fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law.” As we reflect on the many unfulfilled promises of Gideon, we should also pause to consider that this “noble ideal” is not recognized in many court proceedings regarded as “non-criminal,” but where the most serious and significant interests are at stake. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the immigration system.

By Jennie Pasquarella, ACLU of Southern California and Axel Caballero, Cuéntame Where would you expect to find half-a-dozen patrol cars on New Year’s Eve? In Bakersfield, California, ranked in the highest ten percent of the most violent cities in America, you’d hope they’d be responding to incidents of violence and preventing murder, rape, and other violent crime. At the very least, you’d expect them to be patrolling for drunk drivers.

Tarek Hamdi is a civil engineer who’s helped build freeways, tunnels and bridges throughout New England and Southern California. His wife (his college sweetheart) and his four daughters are all American-born U.S. citizens. So it made sense to Tarek, who was born in Egypt but has lived in the U.S. since he was a teenager, to try to become a citizen.

Apparently as a result of sequester-induced budget cuts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently released hundreds of immigration detainees that it found were not risks either to flee or endanger public safety. The fact that these detainees were locked up in the first place confirms a startling truth about our immigration detention system: the government routinely detains people for no good reason. Even Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano promised to examine why these detainees were in jail, saying: "That's a good question. I've asked the same question myself... so we're looking into it."

Whenever there is an officer-involved shooting, we are reflexively asked to withhold judgment until all the evidence comes out. So it is somewhat disconcerting for LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, in providing the first detailed account of the shooting of Margie Carranza and Emma Hernandez in Torrance, to tell the Times in an interview that they were the victims of "a tragic misinterpretation" by officers working under "incredible tension."

By Julia Harumi Mass, ACLU of Northern CaliforniaBertha Mejia is a 53-year-old grandmother who fled political violence and sexual abuse in her native El Salvador as a girl. She has four U.S. citizen children and is the primary caretaker for her 9-year-old grandson, Pablo. The victim of rape at the hands of her employer, Ms. Mejia has a strong case for a "U-visa," a type of visa for victims of crime who cooperate with law enforcement. The police have already certified that Ms. Mejia is a victim who has assisted the police in apprehending the perpetrator.

In 2010, the ACLU put out an ad featuring a picture of President Obama morphing over several frames into a picture of President Bush and asking, "What will it be, Mr. President? Change or more of the same?" Now, we may need to revise it, because while Obama definitely seems intent on more of the same, he looks and sounds more and more like President Nixon.

Last year was jam-packed with stories of companies making costly mistakes on user privacy and free speech. To help companies get a fresh start in 2013, the ACLU of California has just released the new edition of Privacy and Free Speech: It's Good for Business.

By Ariela Migdal, ACLU Women's Rights ProjectUntil today, official United States policy banned all women from being assigned to ground combat units. The policy was military-wide and covered our whole gender – no exceptions for women who were fast, strong, excellent marksmen, good at keeping calm under fire, or able to take and give directions in a high-octane situation. It was one of the last remaining relics of official government exclusion of women.