By Carmen Iguina and Michael Kaufman
This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s declaration in Gideon v. Wainwright that the Constitution guarantees indigent criminal defendants the right to appointed counsel. The Supreme Court described a “noble ideal” of “fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law.” As we reflect on the many unfulfilled promises of Gideon, we should also pause to consider that this “noble ideal” is not recognized in many court proceedings regarded as “non-criminal,” but where the most serious and significant interests are at stake. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the immigration system.
Each day in this country, hundreds of immigrants appear in immigration court where a judge must determine whether they will have the right to remain in their adopted home, with their families and loved ones. Even though the government is represented by a trained attorney, and even though immigration law has been referred to as “more complex than the tax code,” indigent immigrants are forced to navigate this labyrinthine system on their own and without legal counsel.  Our government does not recognize a right to appointed counsel for anyone facing deportation, no matter how incapable that individual may be to defend himself, or how complex his case may be.
The ACLU is seeking to change this deeply unfair system in Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder, a class action lawsuit that seeks to establish the right to appointed counsel for one of the most vulnerable groups in the immigration system – those with serious mental disabilities who are not capable of representing themselves and who are detained by the government while their cases are processed. On Friday, March 22, 2013, the Honorable Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California will hear oral argument on an important motion filed by the ACLU to protect the rights of detainees subject to prolonged detention who are not competent to represent themselves. The preliminary injunction motion was brought on behalf of seven immigration detainees whom the government has declared incompetent, but who it nonetheless continues to detain without access to appointed counsel who could argue for their release.  The motion seeks an order requiring the government to, at a minimum; provide these individuals with the most basic due process – a bond hearing before an immigration judge where they are represented by an attorney who can argue for their release.
At stake is the fate of individuals like Veasana Meas, who entered the United States when he was about five years old and has been a lawful permanent resident for over 20 years. Mr. Meas has a severe mental disability due to his psychiatric condition, and has been found incompetent by an immigration judge. Despite the fact that the government has conceded that he is eligible for relief from removal, the government has detained him for over a year, without providing him with a bond hearing and without appointing a qualified legal representative who can argue for his release. Under no circumstances can these proceedings – where a man declared incompetent must square off against a trained government prosecutor – be considered “fair.”
This Friday, Judge Gee has the opportunity to begin to correct this injustice by granting Mr. Meas, and the others like him, the right to have a qualified legal representative argue for their release after months, and sometimes years, in detention. Such a ruling would represent a significant step in realizing Gideon’s “noble ideal” in the immigration system.

By Jennie Pasquarella, ACLU of Southern California and Axel Caballero, Cuéntame
Where would you expect to find half-a-dozen patrol cars on New Year’s Eve? In Bakersfield, California, ranked in the highest ten percent of the most violent cities in America, you’d hope they’d be responding to incidents of violence and preventing murder, rape, and other violent crime. At the very least, you’d expect them to be patrolling for drunk drivers.
Not so. At least not when it comes to prioritizing such matters as "barking dogs." On December 31, 2012, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department deployed six police cars and numerous officers at the behest of a resident who called for help from, well, the sounds of two small barking dogs. Her neighbor, Ruth Montaño, a Latina farm-worker, and her three American children owned the dogs.
As Ruth poignantly describes in her own words, when she and her children returned to their trailer around 10pm that night from the grocery store, officers approached her and began shouting and cursing at her. They said they were responding to a neighbor’s complaint that her two small dogs were being noisy. Her dogs, a Chihuahua and a Shih Tzu, were enclosed in a fenced-in area outside her trailer. But when Ruth asked the officers what the dogs had done, they refused to answer. When she offered to put the dogs inside, they ignored her.
Instead, the officers questioned her about how long she had been in the United States and insulted her for not speaking English well. They called her and her children garbage and threatened to arrest her. When she pled with them to tell her why they were interrogating her, they again refused to say, growing even more hostile and agitated, and aggressively placing her under arrest. As they walked her over to the patrol car, her children cried and pled for them not to take their mommy. One officer violently bashed Ruth’s head into the side of the patrol car, before forcing her into the vehicle.
The dogs, meanwhile, remained outside, untouched. Barking.
The officers claim that they arrested Ruth for “having animals making excessive noise” and for resisting arrest. But, under Kern County law, “having animals making excessive noise” is neither an arrestable offense, nor is it within the authority of the Sheriff’s Department to investigate – rather it is an issue for Animal Control.
Ruth believes she was arrested for one sole reason: racism. We think she’s right. If not, what’s one other plausible explanation for what happened to her? Anti-immigrant sentiment runs high in places like Bakersfield, and law enforcement officers often target Latino residents. Officers know that all they have to do is make an arrest – whether lawful or not – to turn any suspected “illegal immigrant” from today’s contributing resident into tomorrow’s deportee.
This is because under the federal government’s disastrous Secure Communities (“S-Comm”) program every person who is arrested is immediately screened and identified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) for possible deportation, regardless of their charges.
Dragnet federal immigration enforcement programs, like S-Comm, increasingly are to blame for abusive and unlawful police conduct that target Latinos, violate their civil rights, and undermine public safety. The program encourages police to take action based on race, language, and perceived immigration status – knowing that any arrest could lead to deportation – rather than doing their jobs to ferret out threats to public safety.
Stories like Ruth’s only reinforce the urgent need for California to finally adopt the TRUST Act, a bill that would ensure that the police can no longer detain for ICE people like Ruth who have done no harm to our communities. And it demonstrates the need for Congress to pass common-sense immigration reform to ensure that residents like Ruth are put on a road to citizenship, not a highway to family separation.
Ruth still faces deportation. Do your part and tell ICE to take her out of deportation proceedings. Call (202) 732-3000.