The American Civil Liberties Union has won an important case against the White House over its policy of locking up Central American asylum applicants in order to deter future entries to the US by others. A federal court has enjoined the White House from continuing this policy. From the ACLU:
A federal court today granted a preliminary injunction putting an immediate halt to the Obama administration’s policy of locking up asylum-seeking mothers and children as a way to deter others from coming to the United States.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the case on behalf of mothers and children who have fled extreme violence, death threats, rape, and persecution in Central America and come to the U.S. for safety. Each has been found by an immigration officer or judge to have a “credible fear” of persecution, meaning there is a “significant possibility” they will be granted asylum.
The Department of Homeland Security has been denying release of these families as part of an “aggressive deterrence strategy.” In rejecting the U.S. government’s argument that detention of the women and children was necessary to prevent a mass influx that would threaten national security, the court wrote that the “incantation of the magic word ‘national security’ without further substantiation is simply not enough to justify significant deprivations of liberty.”
“The court held that it was illegal to detain families based on deterrence. It made clear that the government cannot deprive individuals of their liberty merely to send a message to others,” said Judy Rabinovitz, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “This ruling means that the government cannot continue to lock up families without an individualized determination that they pose a danger or flight risk that requires their detention.”
The case doesn’t mean all detention will end, but it will make it much harder for the Obama Administration lawyers to argue to keep people detained. They now will have to address the particular facts of an individual’s case rather than arguing generally that people should be detained as a deterrence measure. Congrats to those lawyers involved in this important case!