This post was written and reported by contributor Dawn R. Wolfe through our Daily Kos freelance program.
A U.S. district court judge on Tuesday ordered ICE to release more than 100 Iraqis who have been held in detention centers and jails in Michigan for more than a year, and to do so within the next 30 days. The Iraqis are to be released under “orders of supervision,” and allowed to return to their homes.
The order by U.S. District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith is the latest in the case of Hamama v. Adducci, which was filed after a June 17, 2017 roundup of Iraqi nationals, including approximately 114 living in Michigan.
The Iraqis, the majority of whom had been living in the U.S. for decades, had originally been ordered deported after committing criminal offenses in the U.S. However, they had also served their sentences for those crimes and had been living “peaceably in their respective communities” since then, according to Judge Goldsmith’s decision.
Despite ICE claims to the contrary, the government of Iraq has not budged from its position that it will not accept Iraqi citizens who are being deported against their will. Goldsmith’s decision outlines several sources corroborating this fact, including from within the Iraqi government itself. Those demonstrably false claims have been a key aspect of the plaintiffs’ case.
“The law is clear that the Federal Government cannot indefinitely detain foreign nationals while it seeks to repatriate them, when there is no significant likelihood of repatriation in the reasonably foreseeable future,” Goldsmith wrote.
Goldsmith also outlined several instances where ICE ignored his orders to provide documents to the detainees’ attorneys. As a result of both those tactics and ICE’s lies, he wrote, he will be issuing sanctions against ICE for “…failing to comply with court orders, submitting demonstrably false declarations of Government officials, and otherwise violating its litigation obligations.”
Many of the Iraqi detainees have been locked up in the Calhoun County jail, where among other privations they haven’t been allowed in-person visits with their family and friends. Further, the majority of the Iraqis are Christians and thus would be subject to persecution and even death if they were to be forcibly returned.
Wednesday, Nov 21, 2018 · 5:14:16 PM +00:00
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Craig Hunter
After this post was published, an ICE representative responded to a request for comment with this statement:
"ICE is reviewing the judge’s order and will determine the appropriate next steps, pending decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on related appeals filed by the government on two previous preliminary injunctions ordered by this court."
Attorneys in the case hailed the decision. “Today’s decision is about accountability,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Miriam Aukerman in a press release. “ICE thought it could get away with using indefinite detention to coerce Iraqis to accept deportation despite the dangers they face in Iraq. Today, Judge Goldsmith made it clear that ICE is not above the law.”
“It is appalling that ICE lied to the court, and even more appalling that it did so in order to keep people wrongfully incarcerated,” said University of Michigan law professor Margo Schlanger, a cooperating attorney for the ACLU. “The Court made it absolutely clear that it will not tolerate such misconduct, and that ICE cannot simply lock people up and throw away the key.”
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If you‘d like to help support more stories like this through our freelance program, contribute here.