Bet
this ruling will piss off a lot of folks.You know, the ones who believe no one should have rights under our constitution, except those with money and power. From the
National Law Journal link:
Three years of work by students in Yale Law School's Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic paid off in a big way last week, when a federal judge ruled that officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may be sued for civil rights violations.
The ruling, issued by Judge Stefan Underhill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, said that ICE officials aren't immune from such suits, and that the court has jurisdiction over this type of immigration case.
"We believe this is the most sweeping decision by a district court on this issue," said Muneer Ahmad, the director of the clinic. "It means that ICE, as a law enforcement agency, is subject to the same measures of constitutional accountability as other agencies."
*snip*
The case stems from an ICE raid on the predominantly Hispanic Fair Haven section of New Haven, Conn., in June 2007. Thirty-two people were arrested during the three-day raid, most of them bystanders and not the people with criminal backgrounds for whom ICE agents were looking, Ahmad said.
The clinic began representing some of those arrested in their immigration cases in 2007, and in 2009 filed Diaz-Bernal v. Myers, the civil rights case. The plaintiffs argue that top-level ICE officials instituted policies and programs that violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the 11 plaintiffs. For example, they alleged, ICE officers entered numerous homes without search warrants or consent during the raid. The government responded with a motion to dismiss the majority of the case.
Although Underhill dismissed some minor claims, he found that the most important ones have enough merit to go forward, Ahmad said.
Read the complaint
here. Three and a half years to get this case to a decision. The government will always drag it heels when those in charge know they fucked up.Chalk up a win, however fleeting, to the brown people and those legal minds that saw through the governmental fuckery and kept doggedly pursuing this issue on their behalf.
