ACLU Wins $200,000 Settlement from Maricopa County Sheriff for Illegal Detention of Citizen and LPR

68-year old Julian Mora and his son were driving in their truck when they were pulled over by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department. They had not violated any traffic laws, but were nonetheless ordered out of the truck, zip-tied, and transported to a nearby work-site immigration raid that was being conducted. After being transported to the raid, they were detained for three hours by the police.

After three hours, they were given the chance to prove that they were lawfully in the U.S. Because Julian Mora is a lawful permanent resident who has lived in this country for over 30 years and his son is a U.S. citizen, they were easily able to do so.

The American Civl Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona brought suit on behalf of Mora against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department and yesterday a settlement was reached for $200,000.

New state laws seeking to further involve local police in immigration enforcement will make these scenarios more and more common. Law enforcement officers in states with new "papers please" laws will inevitably detain U.S. citizens and some of these detentions will end up being for far more than three hours. Imagine the case where a U.S. citizen speaks with an accent and does not have ready access to his birth certificate or passport. Where the citizen is mentally disabled and is unable to explain his situation to the police. There are infinite complications that can and will cause people to be unable to prove their legal status at the drop of a hat. With time, these "papers please" laws will result in more and longer detentions by local police officers of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who can't prove their status on the spot. And when that happens, the taxpayers will be on the hook for more expensive lawsuits and settlements.

See the ACLU press release here.

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Grants Available to Help Permanent Residents Become Citizens

Last week U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that there are three grants available this year to help prepare lawful permanent residents for citizenship and to promote immigrant integration in the United States. The grants total approximately $8.5 million and will provide citizenship preparation programs in cities across the country. There will be an estimated 35 award recipients to be announced by USCIS in September 2011.

Two of the grants will help strengthen citizenship preparation programs, while one of the grants will increase the capacity of organizations to offer citizenship services in underserved communities. Interested parties may apply for these funding opportunities at www.grants.gov and applications are due by April 1, 2011.

For more information, please visit http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=15b82dad650ad210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=68439c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

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U.S. States Again Take Aim at “Birthright Citizenship”

Today the Washington Post reported that state representatives from across the country are joining ranks to support legislation that would deny U.S. Citizenship to children born in the U.S. whose parents are undocumented.

This effort is aimed at the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which currently grants citizenship to all children born within the United States. The proposal would challenge the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and would require that all children born in the U.S. have at least one parent who is a permanent resident or citizen to qualify for U.S. citizenship. The strategy is reported to be explicitly designed to draw legal challenges, and the proponents are hoping that it will force the Supreme Court to ultimately and explicitly decide on the application of the 14th Amendment. Proponents of the new strategy said they would revive the concept of “state citizenship” and would then draw a distinction between children born to parents with and without status. The states would issue a different birth certificate to children of permanent residents and U.S. citizens, versus the birth certificate issued to children born to undocumented immigrants, tourists, and foreign students.

Pennsylvania State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R) reported that he was planning to introduce legislation within weeks in Pennsylvania, and that legislators in about 40 states had expressed support, including Virginia, Arizona, Nebraska, Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.

The Washington Post further reported that opponents of the proposal are calling the challenge racially motivated, and directed at Latino persons. They cite past challenges to the 14th Amendment, raised in the context of challenging the legitimacy of African American, Chinese American and Japanese American citizenship. Further, many of the opponents cite Supreme Court rulings over the past hundred years that uphold the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment: that every child born in this country is an American.

To read the full article, visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/05/AR2011010503134.html?hpid=topnews

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Birthright Citizenship is Settled Law and Why We Shouldn't Change It

Over the last few weeks, politicians have been all over the cable news channels proposing hearings into whether the 14th Amendment really does mean that those born on American soil automatically citizens, regardless of whether their parents have immigration status. The crux of their argument (elaborated here) is the phrase in the 14th Amendment extending citizenship to those born in and “subject to the jurisdiction of” the United States. Some argue that this could be interpreted to exclude the children of undocumented aliens from birthright citizenship.

The problem with this argument is that it has already been heard and rejected by the Supreme Court in the 1898 case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. Given the longstanding precedent on this issue, any change to birthright citizenship would need to come through an amendment to the Constitution.

Though some are loudly calling for just such an amendment, the reality is that the elimination of birthright citizenship would be disastrous public policy. America should be proud of its history of success in assimilating wave after wave of immigrants from all corners of the world, even in the face of different periods of anti-immigrant sentiment. That the children of immigrants are born as Americans and are invited to fully participate in our democracy is key to our incredible history of successful integration of immigrant communities into this nation. To take this away risks bringing up a generation of stateless children who speak English like any other American but have no incentive to buy into the system and become productive members of society.

As Linda Chavez points out in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “Our history has been largely one of continuously expanding the community of people regarded as Americans, from native-born whites to freed slaves to Indians to naturalized citizens of all races and ethnicities. Since the abolition of slavery, we have never denied citizenship to any group of children born in the U.S.—even when we denied citizenship to their parents, as we did Asian immigrants from 1882 to 1943. This expansive view of who is an American has been critical to our successful assimilation of millions of newcomers.”

If this formula has helped drive so much success throughout our history, why change it now?

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