In a front-page story last Sunday, the New York Times reported that internal government documents show how top government officials, many of whom remain in place in the Obama administration, carried out an intentional campaign of obfuscation to try and hide the brutal mistreatment of immigration detainees that has contributed to 107 in-custody deaths since late 2003. The documents were obtained by both the paper and the ACLU from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The ACLU filed a FOIA lawsuit in 2008 demanding access to any and all documents and information in the government’s possession related to the deaths of detainees at immigration detention centers — the patchwork system of privately run jails, federal prisons and county facilities the government uses to hold undocumented immigrants while it tries to deport them.
Sunday’s Times story was just the latest in a series authored by reporter Nina Bernstein, who has utilized the thousands of pages of documents the ACLU’s litigation has successfully wrested from the grips of government agencies to shine a much-needed spotlight on the callousness with which government officials have treated the deaths of immigrant detainees in their custody and which for too long was shrouded in secrecy.
Last January, the Times reported the death of Guido R. Newbrough, 48, a construction worker born in Germany but who lived in the United States for the last 42 years of his life while sporting a "Raised American" tattoo on his shoulder. Newbrough died Nov. 27, 2008, in a Virginia hospital after being detained for 11 months at the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, Va. According to the Times, he died of endocarditis, caused by a virulent staph infection that is typically cured by antibiotics. But as Bernstein writes, his infection went untreated “despite his mounting pleas for medical care in the 10 days before his death.”
This past April, Bernstein authored a compelling narrative about Ahmad Tanveer, a Pakistani New Yorker whose 2005 death was buried by the government and kept out of public view until it was unearthed through some of the documents obtained by the ACLU.
And in August, Bernstein reported on the death of Felix Franklin Rodriguez-Torres, 36, an Ecuadorian construction worker whose death at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona from a fast-growing but treatable form of testicular cancer that went undiagnosed by government officials was also hidden from public view until exposed by the ACLU.
The ACLU’s FOIA litigation, combined with the Times’ reporting, contributed to a number of major concessions by the Obama administration in recent months. This past August, administration officials announced plans to overhaul the immigration detention system and create “a truly civil detention system,” including the ending of family detention at the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Texas which had been the focus of an ACLU lawsuit. The Obama administration was also forced in August to reveal 11 additional deaths in immigration detention that the government had not previously made public.
The ACLU’s litigation and the resulting news coverage in the New York Times and elsewhere underscore the urgent need for overhaul and reform. Among other things, the immigration detention system needs to be infused with far greater levels of independent oversight and transparency than which currently exits. Congress should pass immigration detention reform as part of any comprehensive immigration reform legislation. And our nation as a whole needs to divorce itself from its reliance on detention in the first place. The vast majority of the people the government has forced into detention didn’t ever warrant being detained, but they nonetheless have been victimized by an unyielding commitment to detention and deportation without the kind of individualized determinations that are the essence of due process.
The time for the kind of sweeping, systemic reform that is so desperately called for is now.
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News & CommentaryDec 2024
Civil Liberties
We Need to Know More About State Supreme Court CasesWe Need to Know More About State Supreme Court Cases
State Supreme Courts interpret laws that impact some of the most intimate parts of our lives. Communities have a right to know what’s on the docket. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
Civil Liberties
New ACLU Report Reveals Most State Supreme Courts Fail to Meet Key Transparency MeasuresNew ACLU Report Reveals Most State Supreme Courts Fail to Meet Key Transparency Measures
NEW YORK — Nearly half of all state supreme courts across the country fail to regularly post new cases they are considering, with only six meeting four key transparency measures already implemented by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a new report published today by the American Civil Liberties Union. The report identifies significant steps that state supreme courts should take to inform the public about their cases, which have only grown in importance as the federal judiciary has become more hostile to protecting core rights and advocates have turned to state protections and state court litigation in response. Based on an analysis of the practices and policies of the highest courts in each state, including D.C., the report “Scorecard for State Supreme Court Transparency: How Does Your State Stack Up?” ranks each state supreme court in five tiers based on compliance with four key transparency measures. These measures include posting new cases online in a timely manner, providing timely information about legal issues presented by cases, making dockets accessible and free for the public, and making merits briefing accessible and free for the public. “State courts regularly hear — and are the final word on — cases affecting abortion rights, voting rights, criminal justice reform, and more. Yet, in many instances, the highest state courts do not provide meaningful public access to information about cases affecting the rights and liberties of millions of people. We urge state supreme courts to bring more transparency to the critical work they do,” said Julie Murray, co-director of the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative. “In the face of a federal judiciary increasingly unwilling to protect core rights and an incoming administration that threatens to exacerbate that problem, state courts are an important defense for our liberty. They should be leaders in transparency, too,” said Bridget Lavender, Skadden Fellow with the Initiative. The report emphasizes that state courts “play an outsized role” in many parts of the law, but their ability to “guard our liberties depends in significant part on whether those courts adopt transparent processes.” It further highlights that state supreme courts have led the way on enormously consequential decisions in recent years. In particular, some state supreme courts have recognized the right of same sex couples to marry, and did so long before federal courts. They have also declared the death penalty unconstitutional under state law despite contrary federal law, protected access to reproductive health care as a right even as that right was being stripped away at the federal level, and provided more robust protection to people subject to unreasonable searches and seizures. The report urges state supreme courts to take action to improve their transparency practices, taking notes from the courts that have already implemented these measures. It notes that regularly posting new cases and the issues they represent, and providing timely access to dockets and merits briefing allows the public, the press, and the legal community to track cases as they unfold, identify cases with statewide consequences, and understand what’s at stake. -
Press ReleaseNov 2024
National Security
+2 Issues
ACLU Urges House to Kill Bill that Could Give Trump Admin Power to Crush Dissent and Go After Political EnemiesACLU Urges House to Kill Bill that Could Give Trump Admin Power to Crush Dissent and Go After Political Enemies
WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges the House of Representatives to vote NO on H.R. 9495, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would grant Donald Trump and his handpicked secretary of the Treasury power to investigate and effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization — including news outlets, universities, and civil society groups — by stripping them of tax-exempt status based on an unilateral accusation of wrongdoing. “Passing this bill would hand the incoming Trump administration a dangerous new tool it could use to stifle free speech, target political opponents, and punish disfavored groups,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU. “The freedom to dissent without fear of government retribution is a vital part of any well-functioning democracy, which is why Congress must block H.R. 9495 before it’s too late.” While there is a 90-day “cure” period in which a designated nonprofit can mount a defense, it is a mere illusion of due process. The government may deny organizations its reasons and evidence against them, leaving the nonprofit unable to rebut allegations. This means that a nonprofit could be left entirely in the dark about what conduct the government believes qualifies as "support," making it virtually impossible to clear its name. Last month, the ACLU and a diverse array of over 130 other tax-exempt organizations — including human rights, reproductive health, and immigrants’ rights groups — wrote to Congress urging them to vote no. The letter also explains that the groups do not oppose the provisions in H.R. 9495 that relate to preventing the IRS from imposing fines and penalties on hostages while they are held abroad. Indeed, these provisions have already passed the Senate on their own, and if the House of Representatives were to pass a version of this bill that did not include the text of H.R. 6408, it could be sent immediately to President Biden for his signature. -
News & CommentaryNov 2024
Civil Liberties
Donald Trump Will Return to the White House in January. The ACLU is Ready.Donald Trump Will Return to the White House in January. The ACLU is Ready.
Starting in 2016, the ACLU filed more than 400 legal actions against Trump and his administration. As Trump returns to the White House, we’re ready to return to the courts and Congress to fight for our civil liberties.