With community partners, we supported a bill to remove an old, outdated state law from the 1960s that criminalizes abortion. 

Originally published in the spring 2018 Torch 

Not long after the 2016 elections, a local newspaper asked me to sum up Obama’s record on civil and human rights during his time in office. I told the reporter that, while Obama should be lauded for his stand on samesex marriage and police reform, his policy of deporting thousands of Central American unaccompanied minors and families with children back into the imminently dangerous conditions that caused them to flee would, in my view, forever stain his legacy.

While I stand by that critique, I admit it rings a little hollow when compared with the scale of callousness and cruelty we have come to expect from the current administration. There are so many examples we could cite. The Muslim ban. Ending temporary protected status for El Salvadoran refugees. Trump’s rescission of DACA.

But the Trump-era policy that gives the surest glimpse of the depths to which the Trump administration is willing to stoop came to light as a result of a recent ACLU lawsuit. Our colleagues in San Diego and at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on behalf of a woman and her 7-year-old daughter who were forcibly torn from each other’s arms and detained separately, 2,000 miles apart, after fleeing violence in their home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Once separated, the woman could hear her daughter frantically screaming in the next room that she did not want to be parted from her mother. For nearly four months the young girl has sat alone, without her mother’s care, in a shelter for “unaccompanied” minors in Chicago.

Instead of finding aid and comfort in our country, as they hoped, the mother and child found a new version of the terror they thought they had escaped in the Congo.  The mother has since been released, and as of this writing, efforts are underway to reunite her with her daughter, but the trauma they’ve experienced cannot be undone. 

This is no isolated incident. This case and hundreds of others demonstrate that even if the Trump administration does not yet have a formal policy of separating border crossing families from their children, they are doing so as a matter of practice. The reason?  To scare others from seeking refuge in the U.S.

Yes, you read that right. The Department of Homeland Security’s deterrence plan, it seems, is to emotionally torture young children to set an example for other refugee families who might come. Because, how else does a child experience the trauma of being ripped from the arms of her mother and sent to a distant, alien place that, by all accounts, looks like prison?

As torture.

And the fact that some high-ranking ICE official in some lofty office building in Washington, D.C. may have spent time devising this plan--as if it were legitimate policy-making--is as repugnant as it is absurd.

In this edition of the Torch you will read about the case of Manuel Pérez, whom we are representing in a petition to parole out of the detention facility where he is being held so he can obtain the medical care he so desperately needs. Manuel, too, was separated from his 9-year-old son when ICE detained them on the border near San Diego. With your help, the ACLU is doing everything possible to fight against this despicable practice. Because the path to making America great again is not paved with cruelty, arrogance, and selfishness. It is lit by the same values that draw immigrants to our shores: freedom, fairness, and justice. 

Originally published in the spring 2018 Torch

Fourteen months ago Manuel Pérez* lay on the ground unconscious in the sloping mountains of Sierra de los Cuchamatanes, Guatemala. His skull was fractured. His teeth were broken. And his brain was hemorrhaging blood.

For nine long hours, he remained unconscious, his life hanging in the balance.  

Six men had beaten Manuel to within an inch of his life with a bat and a large rock because he is of Mayan descent, a historically brutalized and displaced indigenous group. For nine long hours, he remained unconscious, his life hanging in the balance. 

Manuel survived, but he was in critical condition and afraid for his life.  He knew that to avoid further persecution and violence, he would have to seek safe sanctuary outside of Guatemala.

He soon fled with his young son and sought withholding of removal—immigration relief that is similar to asylum—in the United States, where he has a sister and a brother who are lawful permanent residents. He hoped to start over in a land where he wouldn’t be targeted because of his ethnic identity; where he would be free from violence.

Manuel was wrong.

When he entered the United States, the government separated Manuel from his son and threw him into civil immigration detention at Cibola County Correctional Center without a bond hearing, even though he arrived in the country with a traumatic brain injury. Operated by for-profit prison company CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, Cibola is notorious for medical neglect.

For months on end, Manuel has suffered from severe pain, vertigo, loss of vision, persistent headaches, and cognitive difficulties. His conditions have severely worsened since he was first detained.

In December, the ACLU of New Mexico filed a Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus on behalf of Manuel, petitioning a federal district court to order his release from prolonged detention so that he can access the critical care he needs to treat his injury.

“It is unconscionable for our government to detain a person without a bond hearing and with grave neurological trauma for nearly a year,” said ACLU of New Mexico staff attorney Kristin Greer Love. “Denying him care, while CoreCivic profits from his prolonged detention, is cruel and unjust.”

“It is unconscionable for our government to detain a person without a bond hearing and with grave neurological trauma for nearly a year,” said ACLU of New Mexico staff attorney Kristin Greer Love. 

Despite a neurologist’s recommendation that he get specialized care outside the facility, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has twice denied parole that would allow him to access medical treatment.

ICE’s denial is part and parcel of the Trump administration’s practice of indiscriminately denying parole and bond to asylum-seekers and other vulnerable people. Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order entitled “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements,” directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to use all legally available resources to build and operate detention facilities to hold immigrants at or near the U.S.-Mexico border. The order further directs the Secretary of DHS to take immediate measures to ensure that arriving immigrants be detained for the duration of their immigration proceedings and to limit parole only to circumstances in which “an individual demonstrates urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit derived from such parole.” 

As a result, ICE officials have engaged in a pattern of detaining asylum-seekers and people seeking withholding of removal for prolonged periods without regard for their particular circumstances, including whether or not they are a flight risk or pose a danger to the community. Even in cases where asylum-seekers win their court cases and are granted release by a judge, the U.S. government often appeals the decision, prolonging detention for as long as possible.

A Human Rights First report released in September 2017 reveals that ICE field offices across the country that formerly released some eligible asylum seekers on parole, now “rarely, if ever” release them from detention on parole. The report cites examples of asylum seekers that include: a West African man persecuted because of his sexual orientation who was held for over fourteen months, even though his brother is a U.S. citizen; a Venezuelan human rights lawyer whose family members were tortured, killed and dismembered for their political affiliation who was held for six months; and a torture survivor from Burkina Faso who was detained for over 17 months.

Asylum-seekers who have fled unimaginable circumstances in their home country are treated as criminals, not as human beings deserving of dignity and respect. Rather than offering them safe refuge and protection from violence, the United States is increasingly subjecting them to new forms of cruelty and injustice.

One of the most callous acts of cruelty is separating border crossing parents from their children. To this date, Manuel has not seen his young son, who is now in the care of his sister. Countless other children, who fled horrific circumstances in their home countries, have been detained separately from their parents at a time when they need them most. While the administration has not yet released a formal directive ordering family separation, according to Michelle Brané, Director of the Migrants Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, there have been at least 429 cases.

These measures are no accident.

Few experiences cripple the human spirit more than that of prolonged captivity or separation from loved ones. The Trump administration deliberately engages in these cruel and inhumane practices ostensibly to deter people from seeking asylum or withholding of removal.