CourtHouse News

Ten mothers and children sued the United States on constitutional grounds Friday, claiming their imprisonment in the government's new immigration center in Artesia, N.M., 200 miles from the nearest large city, denies them due process, intentionally denies them access to legal counsel, and that the Obama administration's "detain and deport" policy violates the Convention Against Torture.     Major immigration law offices across the country signed the 60-page federal lawsuit, representing Honduran and Salvadoran mothers and children who are imprisoned at Artesia.     Attorneys for the refuge-seekers claim that the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement deliberately chose the remote site to imprison immigrant mothers and children to deny them access to counsel, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Convention Against Torture, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Fifth Amendment.     The Obama administration opened up the remote prison in response to a perceived influx of immigrant children, particularly at the Texas-Mexico border.     Border Patrol statistics show that undocumented immigration actually is at a 40-year low; the only increase this year has been in the percentage of immigrants who are children, and/or from Honduras.     Lack of prisons to hold children, and political protests against immigrants, led the Obama administration to open the Artesia center to hold children and mothers, and speed up adjudications on their requests for refugee status.     Attorneys for the American Immigration Council, one of the law offices representing the mothers and children, said in a statement Friday that the Obama administration is systematically violating laws by policies that have:     "Categorically prejudged asylum cases with a 'detain-and-deport' policy, regardless of individual circumstances.     "Drastically restricted communication with the outside world for the women and children held at the remote detention center, including communication with attorneys. If women got to make phone calls at all, they were cut off after three minutes when consulting with their attorneys. This makes it impossible to prepare for a hearing or get legal help.     "Given virtually no notice to detainees of critically important interviews used to determine the outcome of asylum requests. Mothers have no time to prepare, are rushed through their interviews, are cut off by officials throughout the process, and are forced to answer traumatic questions, including detailing instances of rape, while their children are listening.     "Led to the intimidation and coercion of the women and children by immigration officers, including being screamed at for wanting to see a lawyer."     American Immigration Council attorney Melissa Crow called it "an assault on due process."     The 10 plaintiffs in the lawsuit, some of them widows, describe death threats from violent drug gangs who control neighborhoods in Honduras and El Salvador, whose notoriously corrupt police agencies allegedly told the mothers they could do nothing to protect them.     The lawsuit states: "This is an immigration case involving life and death stakes.     "Plaintiffs are mothers and children from El Salvador and Honduras who, like many other Central Americans, have fled persecution in their countries of origin.     "The United States government arrested plaintiff mothers and children shortly after they crossed into the United States near the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and brought them to a makeshift detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico. The detention facility is profoundly isolated, miles away from any major cities and lawyers. The closest major metropolitan area is El Paso, Texas, which is close to 200 miles away.     "Under the Immigration and Nationality Act ('INA') and its implementing regulations- as well as under the Due Process Clause - plaintiffs have an indisputable right to seek asylum and related relief, and to a fair hearing to present their claims. But that process at Artesia has been anything but fair, and falls far short of the government's obligations under existing law. Instead, the government has created what can only be described as a 'deportation mill' that is sending mothers and children back to their home countries to face serious harm without ever having given them a meaningful opportunity to present their claims."