In an Amici Curiae Brief filed in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Human Rights Watch and a number of other organizations provide profiles of individual cases that illustrate the unconstitutional nature of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) detention scheme. These detentions can last months or years, and often result in a detainee being placed in an ICE facility thousands of miles away from their families and communities.
ICE claims that the majority of removal cases are completed in an average of 45 days, and that when detentions run longer than that period, it is typically because the detainee is asserting a claim that is “unlikely to succeed.” However, the Brief offers examples of specific cases where individuals pursuing a legitimate claim have been detained for periods far longer than that. Among others, these examples include individuals who were subjected to prolonged detention due to administrative errors, or who were forced to spend years in locations far from their families despite the eventual success of their claim.
You can read the full brief here.
