Federal judge rules that immigration detainers are unconstitutional
News from Texas! The same federal judge who will hear the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the state’s new controversial anti-sanctuary cities law ruled earlier this week case that the Bexar County sheriff violated the constitutional rights of a Mexican citizen when he was held in jail on an immigration detainer after his criminal charges were dismissed.
In ordering summary judgment for the plaintiffs, Judge Orlando Garcia found the Bexar County Jail regularly honors ICE detainers, which are requests that the jail hold for 48 hours people who were arrested on state criminal charges and were ordered released but are suspected of violating immigration laws. Because immigration violations for the most part are civil matters that don’t incur criminal penalties, the Sheriff’s Office does not have probable cause to hold them, he ruled.
“In short, the county’s assumption that probable cause must exist to detain any individual for whom it receives an ICE detainer request was unreasonable,” Garcia wrote. “Its routine detention of such individuals made it inevitable that it would engage in warrantless detention of individuals who were not suspected of any criminal offense, but who became the subjects of ICE detainer requests either because they fell within a noncriminal … enforcement priority or because a detainer request was lodged despite their nonpriority status.”
KJ