UT Immigration Professor Sues Department of Homeland Security
LEXIS NEXIS Legal Newsroom Immigration Law summarizes the story of a University of Texas law professor taking on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Denise Gilman, who directs the UT Law School Immigration Clinic, is seeking access to public records that she says could prove officials are setting higher bonds for women at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas to fulfill daily detention quotas. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, is based on the Freedom of Information Act and requests that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement produce all documents related to the custody determinations of women held at the facility from July 2013 to March 2014. Gilman says she detected a pattern of federal officials setting “across-the-board bonds,” regardless of whether detainees posed a threat of fleeing or a danger to the community, in order to extend their detention and thus meet a congressional mandate (known as the “beds quota”) to maintain 34,000 immigration detention beds daily across the country. She wants all records related to the procedures and process that officials used to make their decisions on each woman’s individual case, according to the lawsuit filed in the Western District of Texas.
KJ