The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU/SC) condemns a recent brutal beating by two Los Angeles County Sheriffs deputies of a detainee at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, part of the county jail system.

The violent January 24 attack on James Parker, detained on a non-violent marijuana charge, was witnessed by ACLU/SC’s Esther Lim, who is assigned to monitor all county jails.

“We believe Mr. Parker’s beating is not an isolated incident,” said Hector Villagra, incoming executive director of the ACLU/SC. “Rather, it highlights the rampant violence that continues to plague the county’s jails, and demands court intervention to protect detainees from brutal attacks and retaliation. That the ACLU/SC monitor witnessed a brutal attack in plain sight is alarming and can only lead us to conclude detainees are subject to even greater cruelty when no one is watching.”

The beating was made public Monday in a sworn statement submitted in federal court by Lim, who watched through a glass window as deputies repeatedly punched, kneed and tasered Parker while he was lying motionless on the floor.

“Mr. Parker looked like he was a mannequin that was being used as a punching bag,” Lim says in her statement. “I thought he was knocked out, or perhaps even dead.” Lim hit the glass divider hoping to get the deputies’ attention and stop the attack, but the officers continued to punch and taser Parker.

“Mr. Parker was not fighting with the deputies,” Lim says in her statement, adding he “was not trying to kick, hit or otherwise fight with the deputies.” Yet deputies continued to order him to “stop resisting” and “stop fighting”, while simultaneously punching and kneeing his limp body repeatedly and tasering him multiple times. The deputies then wrote in a jail log that Parker had been fighting and resisting, contrary to what Lim witnessed.

“This kind of brutal beating is unacceptable,” said Peter Eliasberg, ACLU/SC managing attorney. “We are also very concerned that shortly after the beating the sheriff’s department issued a log report contradicting what witnesses, including our monitor, saw. The report claims Parker was resisting and fighting with deputies when he was on the ground. That is blatantly false.”

Parker now faces charges for allegedly assaulting the very deputies who beat him.

Lim’s statement, along with that of another witness to the beating, were filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, to bolster a motion the ACLU/SC filed in October seeking a federal court order prohibiting jail deputies from retaliating against prisoners through violence or threats.

The ACLU/SC first sued Los Angeles County and its sheriff in 1975, on behalf of all detainees in the county’s jail system in 1975, charging the conditions of their confinement violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Many remedial orders have been issued over the years in the case Rutherford v. Block. But the systemic problems plaguing the system have recently become so acute the ACLU/SC in December asked U.S. District Court Judge Dean D. Pregerson to order a new trial in a case based on “an escalating crisis of deputy violence, abuse and inmate suicides” at Men’s Central Jail, another facility in the Los Angeles County jail system.

A report released by the ACLU/SC in September painted a stark picture of unacceptable levels of violence in the jails, including reports of deputies beating handcuffed detainees, injuring some so badly that they ended up in intensive care. The report also showed retaliation against inmates to be an acute problem. Several prisoners have been severely punished for meeting with representatives of the ACLU/SC, which is the court-appointed monitor of conditions inside L.A.'s county jails.

“The reign of terror we’re uncovering in the Los Angeles County Jails is unmatched by any of the hyper-violent prisons and jails across the country we have investigated,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “The brutality there is so blatant and routine that the deputies carried out a vicious beating in full view of a court appointed monitor. The court needs to take immediate action to ensure the protection of prisoners.”

The ACLU’s National Prison Project, along with Disability Rights California, and the law firm of Bingham McCutchen LLP are co-counsel in the case.

The ACLU of Southern California and the national ACLU filed an emergency request to prevent a woman, who is a lawful permanent resident, and her U.S. citizen child from being denied entry into the United States.

The woman and her son were returning home from Egypt, which has erupted in violence and instability. The request was filed in the Central District Court of California to allow her to enter the United States and remove her from the “No Fly List.”

Samaa Kerba and her four-year-old son, Farias Daniel As Salaaf, left Cairo yesterday to escape the violence and return to Los Angeles. However, when they arrived in Amsterdam, Holland, they were stopped by U.S. authorities because Ms. Kerba is on the federal government’s “No Fly List” for reasons unknown. She alerted her brother, Samy Ali of Palm Springs, and he contacted the ACLU/SC for help. Mother and child fear they could be returned to Egypt in less than eight hours.

“The plight of Ms. Kerba and her American-born son highlight how horribly broken the “No Fly List” system has become,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of Immigrants’ Rights and National Security for the ACLU/SC. “Americans fleeing civil unrest should be welcomed here, not barred from returning in violation of the most basic constitutional rights.”

The ACLU/SC and the national ACLU filed a lawsuit last year on behalf of more than a dozen people who were placed on the “No Fly list.” According to the ACLU's legal complaint, thousands of people have been added to this list and barred from commercial air travel without any opportunity to learn about or refute the basis for their inclusion. The result is a vast and growing list of individuals who, on the basis of error or innuendo, have been deemed too dangerous to fly but who are too harmless to arrest.

“Surely, every American’s worst nightmare is to find themselves attempting to flee a country in chaos only to discover their own government has slammed the door in their face without any explanation,” said Hector Villagra, incoming executive director of the ACLU/SC.

LOS ANGELES — A coalition of civil rights groups has agreed to dismiss its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against federal immigration officials, after securing the release of more than 2500 pages of documents relating to the federal government’s unlawful treatment of workers detained during a huge workplace raid in Los Angeles in 2008.

On Monday, January 31, 2011, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the ACLU of Southern California and the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles dismissed their federal lawsuit against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.  When the civil rights groups filed the lawsuit in October 2008, the agencies had failed to release a single document in response to the FOIA request.  It was only through the federal litigation that the groups were able to negotiate the release of documents originally withheld by the agencies.

The documents released pertain to a federal immigration raid that took place on February 7, 2008 at a Micro Solutions Enterprises manufacturing plant in Van Nuys.  Agents interrogated and detained well over 130 employees, though they only had arrest warrants for eight, raising concerns that workers were subject to interrogation without any legal basis.

The documents released by the government following the filing of the lawsuit shed light on agents’ conduct during the raid.  Specifically, the documents established that, although government officials only had warrants to arrest a few individuals, they actively planned to arrest up to 200 workers in their raid dragnet.  Furthermore, ICE officials admitted that they engaged in the raid as a result of an anonymous tip.  The released documents were an important part of establishing that the workers arrested in the raid should have their immigration proceedings terminated because the arresting agents violated the workers’ rights.

“These documents have allowed the dozens of men and women who were unlawfully swept up by this raid to fight their cases and stay here in the United States with their families and children,” said Karen Tumlin, managing attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. “Without the litigation, the government may never have come clean about its illegal actions during the Micro Solutions Raid, and the families and communities of those affected by the raids might be suffering a much worse fate today.”

“We were pleased to represent NILC in this litigation, and we are delighted by the result.     Not only were we able to uncover some of the ongoing failures of the government in conducting immigration raids and obtain important evidence for use by the Micro Solutions employees in their individual immigration cases, we were able to hold the government accountable to its policy of transparency to the public, which is, of course, the underlying purpose of the FOIA statute,” said Katherine Smith, an attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, which served as pro bono counsel for NILC in the lawsuit.

“At a time when some in Congress are calling for a return to worksite enforcement, the documents obtained through this lawsuit show what a tragically misguided effort that would be.  The Micro Solutions raid traumatized dozens of people, both citizens and non-citizens, resulted in a massive expenditure of judicial resources, but as of now has resulted in virtually no deportations,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrants’ rights and national security at the ACLU of Southern California.  “It is hard to imagine more conclusive proof that raids damage our communities while doing nothing to make us safer.”

The lawsuit, National Immigration Law Center v. Department of Homeland Security, sued both the Department of Homeland Security, and its sub-agency, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which conducted the February 7, 2008 raid in Van Nuys.  NILC was represented by Maurice M. Suh and Katherine Smith, of Gibson Dunn.  The National Immigration Law Center’s in-house counsel also participated as counsel in the case, and their team included Linton Joaquin, Karen Tumlin and Nora Preciado.  Ahilan Arulanantham and Jennie Pasquarella from the ACLU of Southern California represented itself and the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles.