Immigration Clinic Represents Somali nationals in Class Action Lawsuit
Rebecca Sharpless, Director and Professor of Clinical Legal Education
U.S. District Court Judge Darrin P. Gayles will hold a hearing on a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Somali nationals and others on Monday, January 8 at 10 a.m. at the courthouse in Miami. The lawsuit is being litigated by the Immigration Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law, the ACLU’s national Immigrants’ Rights Project, Americans for Immigrant Justice, James H. Binger Center for New Americans at the University of Minnesota Law School, Legal Aid Service of Broward County, and The Advocates for Human Rights.
The hearing will address whether the court has jurisdiction to consider the petitioners’ claim that they are entitled to a stay of removal while they seek reopening of their removal orders. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s national Immigrants’ Rights Project, will be arguing the case for jurisdiction to the court.
The men and women facing deportation to Somali argue that their lives are now in danger because of the widespread media coverage of the failed December 7 flight. Many have lived in the United States for years and are Westernized, making them targets for fundamentalist terrorist violence in Somalia.
Judge Gayles issued a temporary order on December 18, 2017, ordering a stay of deportation, and that the men and women receive medical treatment for injuries sustained during flight.
Physicians from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Human Rights Clinic of Miami examined 18 Somali nationals in immigration detention and found many of the 92 men and women sustained injuries from being shackled at their wrists, waists, and legs for almost two days, including over 20 hours when the plane sat on the runway in Dakar, Senegal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
The class action lawsuit cites U.S. asylum law, which forbids the removal of individuals to countries where they would face a likelihood of persecution or torture, and seeks an order preventing the removal of the detainees to Somalia until the men and women are provided with an opportunity to determine if they are entitled to protection considering changed circumstances created by the failed deportation flight.
KJ