Republican legislators in several different states revealed a new plan to deal with our broken immigration system. Their proposal requires the states to pass laws creating two classes of birth certificates -- based on the immigration status of the parents of the child -- and then to deny citizenship to those children whose parents do not have the right to live here permanently. The idea appears to be to first deny these American-born children state citizenship, and then use this as a springboard to deny them United States citizenship.

It is hard to imagine a more misguided idea coming from a set of legislators who say that they want to protect our country, defend the Constitution, and fix our immigration laws. In pursuing those goals, they seem to have forgotten what American citizenship means. The proposal to redefine citizenship is contrary to our most basic American values. Our country has only one class of citizens because we do not believe in judging people based on the actions of their parents. One hundred and fifty years ago we fought a bloody Civil War to establish that basic principle, and also its corollary: that the states cannot adopt differing – and racially discriminatory -- definitions of who is a citizen of the United States.

The Fourteenth Amendment’s basic notion of fairness and equality puts everyone born in this country on an equal footing in the eyes of the law. It is the most enduring legacy of the Civil War, and our most precious national heritage.

The proposal is also blatantly unconstitutional. The majestic words of the Fourteenth Amendment establish not only that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States” are U.S. citizens, but also that they are citizens “of the State wherein they reside.” The Supreme Court established over one hundred years ago that this language protects not only the children of slaves, but all people, including in that case the children of Chinese immigrants who could not themselves become citizens at the time.

While proponents of the plan may point to the exception in the Fourteenth Amendment for the children of people not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, the Supreme Court decided in that same case that those words serve only to deny citizenship to the children of foreign ambassadors or people born in territory held by hostile forces on U.S. soil. That had been the rule under English common law for hundreds of years, and it makes obvious sense – if undocumented immigrants were not subject to our country’s jurisdiction, then we could not try them in our courts for violating our laws.

Finally, the proposal is very bad policy. Denying citizenship to children born in the United States would do nothing to fix the immigration system. That an undocumented person has a young American child does not establish a legal defense to their being deported -- in fact hundreds of American children each year are forced to either leave with their parents or remain here without their parents who are being deported.

And while people may disagree about whether we have to fix the immigration system by creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, there should be no disagreement on a far more basic principle: our nation should never not tolerate a system that creates a permanent group of second-class citizens because of what their parents or grandparents have done. That is something every American citizen should be able to understand.

It’s hard to beat a town like LA – between the glam and the grunge, beaches and deserts, if it exists on earth you can probably find it in LA (or at least a good knock off). That’s why it was a tough pill to swallow when we found out that in 2009, or lovely little hamlet was the capital punishment capital of the United States, sentencing more people to death than any other county in the country. But it gets worse: not only did we beat out every county, we beat out every state, including our friends in Texas (who we usually don’t like to mess with). There were 13 Angelinos sentences to die in 2009, compared to 9 in the entire state of Texas. You can read all about it in this report, Death in Decline ’09 by the ACLU of Northern California.
So as much as we love LA, there are times when you’ve just got to roll up your sleeves and fix things, and this is one of those times. We’ve partnered with the LA County Coalition for Death Penalty Alternatives, a local grassroots coalition working to end death sentencing in LA County, and we need your help!
We’ll be meeting in our office this weekend, Sunday, January 9 from 3 to 5 p.m. to lay out a new structure for the coalition and re-focus our efforts to end the county’s broken death machine, and we need volunteers and activists more than ever! All across the county, we’ll need activists setting up tables to educate the public, meeting with elected officials, and planning events to help us spread the word about LA’s death penalty. Come join us this Sunday and learn how you can make a concrete difference in the criminal justice system.

In a major decision, a U.S. district court has ruled that federal officials must provide representation for two men with severe mental disabilities while they fight their deportation cases.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee’s decision Wednesday also guarantees they must be afforded a bond hearing to determine whether they should remain in detention.
Judge Gee’s decision marks one of the first instances in which a federal court has required the government to provide representation for any individual in immigration proceedings.

“The court’s well-reasoned order recognizes what common sense should already tell us: people with serious mental disabilities cannot get a fair hearing without representation in immigration court,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

In March, the ACLU/SC, the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, Public Counsel in Los Angeles and the Casa Cornelia Law Center in San Diego filed suits in U.S. District Courts in Southern California on behalf of Jose Antonio Franco, 30, and Guillermo Gomez Sanchez, 48. Because of their profound mental disabilities, both men had spent years in immigration detention without legal assistance to fight their cases but were released just days after the suit was filed.

The groups then obtained the assistance of Sullivan & Cromwell and moved to transform the case into a class action on behalf of detainees with mental disabilities in November. The lawsuit alleges federal officials have deprived these immigrants of their Constitutional right to due process and violated federal anti-discrimination laws designed to protect people with disabilities.

Judge Gee’s ruling, which was temporarily filed under seal to protect private medical information, requires the government to obtain representation for the two individuals who are part of the class, both of whom face imminent deportation if not given assistance. The ruling also requires that these individuals be allowed a hearing with representation --- to determine whether any further detention is legal.

“Unfortunately, the stories of these two men are not unique,” said Talia Inlender, an attorney with Public Counsel. “Their plight is the direct result of a system that lacks procedures to address the needs of those with serious mental disabilities.”

Wednesday’s decision will ensure these immigrants who are too mentally disabled and too poor to pay for lawyers get a fair hearing and are not simply locked up and forgotten.

“Judge Gee’s thorough opinion is a first step in ensuring that the rights of those who are rendered helpless by their mental illnesses are not ignored,” said Michael Steinberg, a partner with Sullivan & Cromwell.

On any given day, some 37,000 immigrants are detained by immigration officials. While the exact number of detainees with severe mental disabilities is unclear, some reports estimate that at least two percent of the immigrants detained by immigration authorities nationwide might have a serious mental disability.

Unlike our nation’s criminal justice system, the immigration system has no standard procedures to resolve cases against detainees with mental disabilities who are not competent to understand the proceedings against them.

The litigation is currently on-going. Counsel in the case includes the ACLU/SC, Sullivan & Cromwell, Public Counsel, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, and Mental Health Advocacy Services Inc.