The Trump administration has lost its effort to kill a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, which alleges that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS) have colluded to arrest immigrants arriving to appointments in their efforts to seek legal status. The suit will go forward, Judge Mark Wolf (a Ronald Reagan appointee) said on Thursday.
Among the plaintiffs is Lilian Calderon, who was arrested by ICE this past January when she and her U.S. citizen husband showed up to their USCIS interview in Rhode Island. Calderon was jailed for weeks and was nearly deported, until a federal judge intervened. Calderon is now back with her family and continuing in her pursuit to legalize her status, and now the ACLU of Maine is seeking to protect others who have just been trying to follow the rules, only to get arrested.
“Wolf said the law doesn't allow officials to deport immigrants simply because they're subject to final removal orders if that immigrant is also seeking a waiver to remain in the U.S. while they try to become legal residents,” the AP continued. “But there are some circumstances that may justify their deportation, like if the person has committed a crime, Wolf said.”
But that wasn’t the case in Calderon’s situation at all, because she has no criminal record. “The ladies in the ICE Unit kept asking me, ‘Why are you here?'” she said following her release from custody in February. “Even the [correctional] officers were asking, ‘Why are you ICE? Why are you here?’ No one understood.”
Immigrants should be protected while they pursue legal status through their U.S. citizen spouses, but instead internal documents reveal the two agencies colluding to entrap them. This has been intentional, and one of the clearest examples yet debunking the Trump administration’s lie that it’s not anti-immigrant because it’s in favor of legal immigration. But they don’t like legal immigration either. Just ask Lilian.
"The government created a path to lawful immigration status for our clients, and now it is trying to arrest them for following that path," said the ACLU’s Matt Segal. "And we know why: the Trump administration is relentlessly trying to detain and deport many immigrants as possible, no matter the costs to family unity and civil rights. Today, we tell the Trump administration, again: We'll see you in court."