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U.S.Judge Orders Stop to Detention of Families at BordersBy JULIA PRESTONFEB. 20, 2015

A federal judge in Washington has ordered the Obama administration to stop its practice of detaining most women and children who were caught crossing the border illegally whether or not they had applied for asylum in the United States.The ruling on Friday, by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, invalidates a central piece of the administrations strategy to curb illegal immigration across the Southwest border.During the influx of migrants last summer, the Department of Homeland Security started holding most women who came with their children in detention centers in Texas and New Mexico, to discourage others in their home countries from embarking on an illegal passage to the United States. The women and children were detained even after they had asked for asylum and passed the initial test to prove their cases, showing they had credible fears of facing persecution if they were sent home. Their petitions for release were routinely denied.Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson said the detention policy was devised to send a clear message to families in Central America, where most of the migrants were from: If you come, it is likely you will be detained and sent back.A class-action lawsuit seeking to overturn the policy was filed by theAmerican Civil Liberties Union and the immigration clinic at the University of Texas law school. In issuing a preliminary injunction, Judge Boasberg barred the administration from detaining migrants solely for the purpose of deterring future immigration. He ordered immigration authorities to consider each asylum case to determine if the migrants would present risks to public safety if they were released while their cases moved through the courts. Many of the women said they were fleeing severe criminal violence at home.The authorities will have to look at individual cases rather than making these broad stroke determinations that moms and children should be deprived of their liberty in order to discourage future migrants from coming to the U.S. border, said Denise Gilman, a University of Texas law professor who helped bring the lawsuit.The judge found that liberty is the rule in the United States, she said.Homeland Security officials have been rapidly expanding detention facilities near the border, opening one center last year in Karnes, Tex., and another, planned to hold 2,400 people, in Dilley, Tex. More than 1,000 women and children are currently in detention.Lawyers said they expected that women and children would start being released as early as next week.The court specifically rejected the governments assertion that detention was necessary to protect national security, said Lenni Benson, a professor at New York Law School.The ruling finding that the administration has been too hard on border enforcement comes as the Obama administration is also battling a lawsuit by 26 states against the presidents executive actions to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. The states accuse the administration of failing to aggressively enforce the immigration laws.Dealt Setback, Obama Puts Off Immigrant PlanBy MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JULIA PRESTONFEB. 17, 2015WASHINGTON One day before hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants were to begin applying for work permits and legal protection, administration officials on Tuesday postponed President Obamas sweeping executive actions on immigration indefinitely, saying they had no choice but to comply with a federal judges last-minute order halting the programs.The judges ruling was a significant setback for the president, who had asserted broad authority to take executive actions in the face of congressional Republicans refusal to overhaul the immigration system. White House officials have defended the presidents actions as legal and proper even as his adversaries in Congress and the states have accused him of vastly exceeding the powers of his office.In a decision late Monday, Judge Andrew S. Hanen, of Federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas, in Brownsville, ruled in favor of Texas and 25 other states that had challenged Mr. Obamas immigration actions. The judge said that the administrations programs would impose major burdens on states, unleashing illegal immigration and straining state budgets, and that the administration had not followed required procedures for changing federal rules.Mr. Obama vowed Tuesday to appeal the court ruling and expressed confidence that he would prevail in the legal battle to defend his signature domestic policy achievement. The law is on our side, and history is on our side, he declared.White House officials said the government would continue preparing to put Mr. Obamas executive actions into effect but would not begin accepting applications from undocumented workers until the legal case was settled. That could take months. In the meantime, the president urged Republican lawmakers to return to negotiations on a broader overhaul of immigration laws.We should not be tearing some mom away from her child when the child has been born here and that mom has been living here the last 10 years minding her own business and being an important part of the community, he said.White House officials said the Justice Department was reviewing whether to ask an appeals court to block Judge Hanens ruling and allow the executive actions to proceed. But for now, the judges ruling could be a crushing disappointment to members of the immigrant community, who have spent much of the last two years pressuring Mr. Obama to act decisively to prevent deportations that separate immigrant families, including many with children or spouses who are living in the United States legally.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who had filed the lawsuit in his former position as the states attorney general, hailed the ruling Tuesday as a victory for the rule of law. President Obama abdicated his responsibility to uphold the United States Constitution when he attempted to circumvent the laws passed by Congress via executive fiat, Mr. Abbott said, and Judge Hanens decision rightly stops the presidents overreach in its tracks.

Mr. Obama announced his executive actions on Nov. 20, shortly after Republicans won control of Congress. His plan to shield as many as five million undocumented immigrants from deportation immediately drew harsh attacks from conservatives and prompted legal challenges.Under the judges ruling, the expansion of an existing program that was to begin on Wednesday will be postponed; for now, as many as 270,000 immigrants who came to the United States as children cannot apply for it. White House officials also said Tuesday that they were delaying a second program that would benefit about four million undocumented immigrants with children who are American citizens or legal residents. That program was scheduled to start in May.Republicans in Congress seized on the judges ruling Tuesday to bolster their argument that funding for the Department of Homeland Security should not be approved without measures to block the presidents actions.The presidents extra-constitutional actions were rooted in political expediency and were devoid of a serious legal underpinning, said Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration. This is not and never was about immigration law.But White House officials and some legal scholars noted that another federal judge had dismissed a different challenge to the presidents executive actions, and they predicted that Judge Hanens decision was likely to be suspended by the appeals court.Federal supremacy with respect to immigration matters makes the states a kind of interloper in disputes between the president and Congress, said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. They dont have any right of their own.Immigrant advocates assailed Judge Hanens ruling, saying he had failed to consider the benefits to national security and the economy of having millions of unauthorized immigrants begin taking background checks and paying taxes. Activists said they would continue to prepare immigrants to file applications, on the assumption that the programs would soon be up and running.Detractors of these programs may try to paint this as a fight with the president, but make no mistake: Attempts to dismantle these programs are attacks on American families, said Janet Murgua, president of NCLR, also known as the National Council of La Raza, the countrys largest Latino organization.In his 123-page opinion, Judge Hanen said administration officials had provided perplexing misrepresentations of the scope and impact of the presidents actions. Calling the new programs a substantive change to immigration policy, he said they were, in effect, a new law.As part of the presidents announcements on Nov. 20, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, also established new priorities, instructing enforcement agents to concentrate on deporting terrorists, and gang members, as well as migrants caught crossing the border illegally.The judge rejected the argument that those changes were a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion, ruling that the administration had engaged in a complete abdication of enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security, he wrote, cannot enact a program whereby it not only ignores the dictates of Congress, but actively acts to thwart them.White House officials said the judges order did not prevent Homeland Security officials from exercising that discretion, and they said the department would continue to focus its enforcement efforts on dangerous immigrants.The ruling was not unexpected. In August, Judge Hanen accused the Obama administration of adopting a deportation policy that was an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society.Since the lawsuit was filed on Dec. 3, the stark divisions over Mr. Obamas sweeping actions have played out in filings in the case. Three senators and 65 House members, all Republicans, signed a legal brief opposing the presidents actions.On the other side, a dozen states and the District of Columbia supported Mr. Obama.Across the country, many immigrants were ready to fill out their applications when the immigration agency posted the forms for the first time on its website Wednesday.Dulce Valencia, 19, who was born in Mexico but has lived almost all of her life in the United States, said she was disappointed that she would have to wait.I felt like my world crashed a little bit, she said.Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Julia Preston from New York. Ashley Parker contributed reporting.

U.S. Faces Suit Over Tactics at Immigrant Detention CenterBy JULIA PRESTONAUG. 22, 2014In a challenge to the Obama administrations strategy for deterring illegal border crossings by Central American migrants, civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on Friday claiming that the government committed egregious due process violations against women and children held for deportation at a detention center in New Mexico.The lawsuit, brought in Federal District Court in Washington, says that immigration authorities created a system to rush deportations from the temporary center holding about 600 mothers and their children in the isolated desert town of Artesia, N.M. The suit accuses officials of raising numerous legal and practical hurdles to discourage migrants from seeking asylum, after deciding in advance that few petitions would succeed.By locking up women and babies, the Obama administration has made it their mission to deport these people as quickly as possible, said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, one of the groups bringing the suit. Our message to the government is simple: Follow the law, she said during a conference call with reporters. We must ensure that every person who interacts with our legal system has a fair hearing.Other groups bringing the lawsuit, on behalf of 10 women and children who are or were recently detained in Artesia, are the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Immigration Council and the National Lawyers Guild.The lawsuit escalates the confrontation between the administration and immigrant legal organizations over the effort by the Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, to stem an influx across the South Texas border by detaining more illegal crossers, particularly families with children, and sending them home speedily, to discourage others from attempting the trip.Mr. Johnson has said he wants to send a clear message to Central Americans coming illegally: You will be sent home.In the Artesia center, on a federal law enforcement training campus 200 miles from El Paso, officials set up a courtroom where immigration judges hear asylum cases by video-teleconference and asylum officers interview migrants to make initial assessments of their claims.But according to the lawsuit, the center does not provide conditions for legal advocates to represent the migrants or inform them of their rights. Telephone communications are severely limited, and migrants are not allowed to receive mail to gather documents to bolster their cases. Lawyers routinely had trouble meeting with migrants and were denied access to hearings and interviews.Mothers were required to be interviewed with their children, and they reported being reluctant to discuss threats, sexual abuse and violence they faced.Of course these women want to shield their children from these stories, said Melissa Crow, legal director of the American Immigration Council.Homeland Security officials said they could not discuss the lawsuit directly. But they said that free volunteer lawyers were always available to migrants in Artesia through a sign-up system established in the center. Marsha Catron, a spokeswoman for the department, said the administrations response to the border surge had been both humane and lawful.Officials are imposing a stricter standard in their evaluations of the migrants fears of persecution, the suit says.Homeland Security Department figures show that migrants in Artesia have been denied asylum at a much higher rate than others. As of October, asylum officers were finding migrants fears credible in 80 percent of cases, allowing them to go on to battle for asylum through the courts. In Artesia, officers have found migrants credible in 38 percent of cases.