Law Will Poison Community Policing Efforts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 23, 2010
PHOENIX – Arizona Governor Jan Brewer today signed into law Arizona’s discriminatory immigration enforcement bill which requires law enforcement to question individuals about their immigration status during everyday police encounters. The law creates new immigration crimes and penalties inconsistent with those in federal law, asserts sweeping authority to detain and transport persons suspected of violating civil immigration laws and prohibits speech and other expressive activity by persons seeking work. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona strongly condemn the governor’s decision to sign the unconstitutional law and are dismayed by her disregard for the serious damage it could cause to civil liberties and public safety in the state.
"Governor Brewer and the Arizona legislature have set Arizona apart in their willingness to sacrifice our liberties and the economy of this state," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona. "By signing this bill into law, Brewer has just authorized violating the rights of millions of people living and working here. She has just given every police agency in Arizona a mandate to harass anyone who looks or sounds foreign, while doing nothing to address the real problems we’re facing."
The new law, which will not go into effect for more than 90 days, requires police agencies across Arizona to investigate the immigration status of every person they come across whom they have "reasonable suspicion" to believe is in the country unlawfully. To avoid arrest, citizens and immigrants will effectively have to carry their "papers" at all times. The law also makes it a state crime for immigrants to willfully fail to register with the Department of Homeland Security and carry registration documents. It further curtails the free speech rights of day laborers and encourages unchecked information sharing between government agencies.
"Forcing local police to demand people’s papers and arrest those who can’t immediately prove their status will do nothing to make us safer," said Dan Pochoda, Legal Director of the ACLU of Arizona. "What it will do is divert scarce police resources to address false threats and force officers to prioritize immigration enforcement over all other public safety responsibilities. It is a dark day for Arizona when the goal of appeasing one state Senator, Russell Pearce, takes priority over fundamental rights and economic needs of residents."
Before the governor signed the bill, President Obama criticized it harshly, calling it "misguided" and saying that it threatens to "undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans." Obama promised to “closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation.”
The president’s statement is consistent with his longstanding opposition to anti-immigrant laws that attempt to bypass the federal government. As a senator, he lauded the 2007 legal ruling blocking the anti-immigrant law in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, calling the law “unconstitutional and unworkable.”
Despite the president’s statements, his administration has not taken strong action against state and local anti-immigrant laws, paving the way for extreme laws like the one signed today. Currently, the administration has a prime opportunity to take a stand on the issue, because the solicitor general will soon file a brief explaining the administration’s position on Arizona’s unconstitutional employer sanctions law, passed in 2007, which creates a state-level immigrant employment verification and sanctions regime.
"Actions speak louder than words," said Omar Jadwat, a staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. "As the federal government sits on its hands, Arizona’s anti-immigrant brushfires have turned into a firestorm. We call on the administration to file a brief categorically opposing Arizona’s employer sanctions law to demonstrate its commitment to stopping anti-immigrant laws that interfere with federal authority, wreak havoc on businesses and cause discrimination against Latinos."

# # #

The mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is to maintain and advance the cause of civil liberties within the state of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and assemblage, and the right to vote, due process of law and equal protection of law, and to take any legitimate action in the furtherance and defense of such purposes. These objectives shall be sought wholly without political partisanship.

Newly-Released Judicial Opinion Explains Decision Ordering Release of Mohamedou Salahi
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 12, 2010 CONTACT: (505) 266-5915 Ext. 1003; [email protected]
NEW YORK – A Washington D.C. federal court opinion ordering the release of Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Salahi (sometimes spelled “Slahi”) and providing the reasons for the granting of his habeas corpus petition was made public Friday, April 9th. Federal District Judge James Robertson ruled on March 22 that the U.S. could not continue to detain Salahi, a Mauritanian citizen who has been in U.S. custody since 2001. Judge Robertson’s opinion was released today after undergoing a classification review; some portions were withheld as classified.
The American Civil Liberties Union joined attorneys Nancy Hollander and Theresa Duncan of the law firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A. and Linda Moreno of Linda Moreno P.A. in challenging Salahi’s detention, arguing that the government had no reliable evidence that he was part of al-Qaeda when he was seized in 2001.
“After subjecting Mr. Salahi to illegal renditions to three countries, brutal physical and psychological torture and almost daily interrogations for most of the nine years he has been in U.S. custody, the government could not even tip the scales ever so slightly to justify Mr. Salahi’s detention,” said Hollander, the lead attorney in the case. “It is well past time for him to go home.”
“As Judge Robertson’s opinion makes clear, the allegations that Mr. Salahi participated in the so-called Millennium Plot to attack the Los Angeles airport and recruited two of the 9/11 hijackers are not supported by any credible evidence,” said Duncan. “The truth is the government was wrong when it first detained him, wrong when it tortured him and is wrong in continuing to detain him.”
After Salahi was arrested in Mauritania on suspicion of ties to al-Qaeda, the U.S. government illegally rendered him to Jordan, where he was detained, interrogated and abused for eight months. He was then rendered to Bagram, Afghanistan and finally to Guantánamo, where he has been held in U.S. custody since August 2002.
“Salahi's illegal detention for more than eight years without charge or trial embodies the most egregious abuses of Guantánamo,” said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The district court’s decision invalidating that detention and ordering Salahi’s release is an important step towards restoring the rule of law.”
While at Guantánamo, Salahi was held in total isolation for months, kept in a freezing cold cell, shackled to the floor, deprived of food, made to drink salt water, forced to stand in a room with strobe lights and heavy metal music for hours at a time, threatened with harm to his family, forbidden from praying, beaten and subjected to the “frequent flyer” program, during which he was awakened every few hours to deprive him of sleep. The government falsely told him that his mother had been arrested and was being sent to Guantánamo. Salahi’s abuse was confirmed and well documented in a 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee that investigated allegations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo.
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a military lawyer originally assigned to prosecute the case against Salahi in the military commissions, determined that Salahi’s self-incriminating statements were so tainted by torture that they couldn’t ethically be used against him. Couch told his supervisors that he was “morally opposed” to Salahi’s treatment and for that reason he refused to participate in the prosecution.
The original habeas challenge to Salahi’s unlawful detention was filed in 2005 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Department of Justice is appealing Judge Robertson’s decision.
Lawyers on the case are Nancy Hollander and Theresa Duncan of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A.; Linda Moreno of Linda Moreno P.A.; Jonathan Hafetz, Melissa Goodman and Jonathan Manes of the ACLU; Arthur Spitzer of the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital; Brahim Ould Ebety of Nouakchott, Mauritania; and Emmanuel Altit of Paris, France.
The ruling is available online at: www.aclu.org/national-security/salahi-v-obama-et-al-order

###

The mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is to maintain and advance the cause of civil liberties within the state of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and assemblage, and the right to vote, due process of law and equal protection of law, and to take any legitimate action in the furtherance and defense of such purposes. These objectives shall be sought wholly without political partisanship.

ALBUQUERQUE, NM - In a case brought by the ACLU of New Mexico (ACLU-NM), U.S. District  Judge M. Christina Armijo ruled today that Albuquerque’s regulation banning sex offenders from public libraries is unconstitutional. The court determined that the ban infringed too broadly upon the First Amendment right to receive information and creates “an unacceptable risk of the suppression of ideas.”
“No one questions the City’s purpose of ensuring public safety, but this regulation sacrificed library access for too many people who present no threat to library goers,” said ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson.  “A regulation like this must be narrowly tailored if it is going to infringe on a right as fundamental as the public’s ability to receive information.  For many people, public libraries are, as one court put it, ‘the quintessential locus of the receipt of information.’”
In the decision handed down today, the court reached this conclusion:
“This Court has struggled in this case to strike the proper legal balance between competing interests… On one side of the equation here is the City, which no reasonable person could or would contend does not have a legitimate and compelling interest in…protecting children from harm, danger and crime, especially crimes of a sexual nature. On the other side of the equation is a group of individuals that, no matter how reviled, nevertheless possesses certain constitutional rights. When those rights are burdened or, in this case, wholly extinguished by an action of government, this Court has an obligation to scrutinize the facts and the law closely, carefully, and objectively to ensure that, whatever the end result, it is just. In this case, having done just this, the Court concludes that the City’s regulation, as currently written and in its present form, cannot stand.”
The court’s order enjoins the City of Albuquerque from enforcing the regulation as currently written.
UPDATE (5/7/10): Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry has reinstated the ban for all libraries except the main branch on Thursdays and Saturdays. Read more about the new ordinance and ACLU-NM's response.

###

The mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is to maintain and advance the cause of civil liberties within the state of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and assemblage, and the right to vote, due process of law and equal protection of law, and to take any legitimate action in the furtherance and defense of such purposes. These objectives shall be sought wholly without political partisanship.
Related Documents:

Albuquerque v. Doe Opinion