LOS ANGELES-
Several legal advocacy groups asked a federal judge to order the immediate release of four immigrants who have been detained for months or years without receiving a hearing on why they’re being held so long.
The motion filed Friday asks U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter to release the detainees under conditions of supervision or grant them hearings.
The move followed a class-action lawsuit filed Sept. 25 on behalf of six detainees by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and the Stanford Law School Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. Two detainees have since been released.
The lawsuit alleges the U.S Department of Homeland Security held immigrants for long periods despite court rulings that banned indefinite detention.
“They’re flouting the courts,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an ACLU attorney.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Detainees are typically held for six months but can be held longer if they have previous criminal convictions or if the government believes they pose a threat to the public, agency spokeswoman Virginia Kice said.
“People need to bear in mind that under the law, if they have criminal convictions, we’re required to hold them while their immigration cases are adjudicated,” she said.
The detainees include a 37-year-old Nigerian man, a 31-year-old Senegalese man, a 38-year-old Chinese man from Indonesia and an Ecuadorean man.
Of the four, only the Ecuadorean immigrant has a criminal record. The ACLU argues his burglary and petty theft convictions aren’t serious felonies and that he poses no serious threat if released.
