News & Commentary

The American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project and the ACLU of Rhode Island have today filed a “friend of the court” brief in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island in an important immigration case in which the federal government is claiming that a person who will likely be tortured if he is extradited back to his home country cannot rely on that fact to prevent his return to that country. The ACLU brief calls that position “incorrect.”

RILS and the ACLU of RI have appealed a state Commissioner of Education ruling upholding the Providence School District’s method of providing services to English Language Learners (EL), but which the two groups claim clearly violates federal and state law and significantly shortchanges the educational rights of EL students. In essence, the groups charge, RIDE has interpreted the state’s regulations governing EL instruction to provide less support to those students than federal law itself requires.

It was no coincidence when undocumented immigrants like Rhode Island resident Lilian Calderon were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials immediately after showing up for interviews at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices (CIS) to legalize their status. Instead, documents released yesterday reveal that CIS officials informed Boston ICE agents of the interviews, scheduled them at a convenient time for ICE, and sometimes even notified ICE when an individual arrived for his or her interview and how the interview was progressing. The disclosures came in a request for a preliminary injunction against the practice made by ACLU of Massachusetts attorneys in a class-action lawsuit filed in April on behalf of Ms. Calderon.

Reverting to a practice it had forsworn after the ACLU sued on behalf of Rhode Island resident Lilian Calderon, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have said they may once again snatch and detain undocumented immigrants who show up for interviews with federal immigration officials to legalize their status. The revelation was made last week in a filing in Ms. Calderon’s lawsuit by a new ICE Interim Field Office Director in Boston, Rebecca Adducci.

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld President Trump’s third “Muslim Ban,” overturning previous court rulings against it.  All versions of this “Ban” block immigrants and temporary visitors from several Muslim-majority countries. Steven Brown, ACLU of RI executive director, issued the following statement in response:

The ACLU has filed a class action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s pattern of separating married couples and families pursuing lawful immigration status. The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is Rhode Island resident and mother Lilian Calderon, who was recently released from detention as the result of earlier ACLU court action.

ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown issued the following statement today in response to the inclusion of a question about citizenship status in the 2020 census:

Responding, in an ACLU lawsuit, to a federal judge’s order demanding answers as to why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials detained Lilian Calderon, a 30-year-old Rhode Island mother of two young children, for almost a month, an ICE official has cited three reasons: (1) it believed her 2002 order of removal—which she had been taking steps to address since 2016 under available regulations—rendered her a flight risk, (2) the “availability of bed space”; and (3) “lack of child care issues.” The official also acknowledged that Calderon could be subject to detention again after a three-month stay that ICE issued expires.

Following the release Tuesday of Rhode Island resident Lilian Calderon from an immigration detention facility after being detained by ICE for almost a month, a federal judge in Massachusetts is demanding answers from the federal agency in response to the ACLU lawsuit filed last week that challenged her detention and helped lead to her release.