Bay Area Cities Fight to Protect Immigrants in Prolonged Detention
San Mateo Co. officials joined others to urge the Supreme Court grant constitutional protections to immigrants held in prolonged detention.
BAY AREA, CA - Twenty U.S. cities and counties led by Santa Clara County have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that immigrants held in prolonged detention during deportation proceedings are entitled to certain constitutional protections.
The local governments filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Feb. 10 asking the high court to uphold a 2015 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
The appeals court said in that ruling that immigrants who are held in custody while awaiting deportation proceedings must be given a bond hearing before an immigration judge every six months with the possibility of release on bond if they are not deemed dangerous or a flight risk.
The friend-of-the-court brief, also known as an amicus brief, supports a group of immigrants who sued the federal government in federal court in Los Angeles in 2007, won a preliminary injunction in that court and then won the appeals court decision.
The brief was written by lawyers in the Santa Clara County Counsel's Office. Other Bay Area governments signing on include Alameda and San Mateo counties and Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose.
Other participants nationwide include Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Washington, D.C. among others.
"Our amicus brief offers an important local perspective, which has been missing from the conversation about immigration detention without bond hearings," Santa Clara County Counsel James Williams said last week.
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