LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The ACLU of Southern California today applauded the Laguna Beach City Council for repealing an anti-sleeping ordinance that criminalized individuals for being chronically homeless. The City Council action came three months after the ACLU/SC, the law firm of Irell & Manella LLP, and Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine law school, sued the affluent city for its unconstitutional harassment and intimidation of disabled homeless residents.

The city had used the ordinance as a premise for its police officers to wake and subject homeless residents to harassment, threats and intimidation; conduct unjustified stops of them that resulted in middle-of-the-night interrogations and warrant checks; and to confiscate their property, among other punitive steps.

“We’re pleased that the city recognizes it cannot treat its most vulnerable residents as if they were a law-enforcement problem that can be eliminated with citations and harassment,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU/SC. “We hope the city’s leaders will now seek a long-term solution to chronic homelessness by providing shelters and supportive services. This will not only take people off the street but, as has been shown time and time again in communities across the country, provide taxpayers with a more cost effective and humane way to treat homeless individuals who might otherwise end up in already overburdened public emergency medical facilities, or in the hands of law enforcement.”

Andra Barmash Greene, the managing partner of Irell & Manella LLP’s Newport Beach office and co-counsel in the case, added that she hopes the council’s action “is the first step in addressing issues of homelessness in Laguna Beach. What the City Council has still not addressed is whether previously issued citations will be rescinded or expunged.”

Hector Villagra, director of the ACLU/SC’s Orange County office, noted that the ACLU/SC and its partners will monitor the city’s new policy for dealing with homeless people to ensure that the Laguna Beach Police Department does not revert to the criminalization of the past.

“This is a step in the right direction, but whether it will resolve the lawsuit remains to be seen,” Villagra said. “We challenged the mistreatment of the homeless, not the justification for it. If the city is going to continue to harass homeless residents under other provisions, then we are essentially in the same position as we were before the repeal.”

The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 23 last year after yearlong discussions between city officials and attorneys representing the homeless failed to yield necessary revisions to Laguna Beach’s policy toward homeless persons. The legal action sought to prevent the city from harassing and intimidating the homeless, particularly for the involuntary and necessary act of sleeping.

The long-term solution is for Laguna Beach to provide more shelter support and services that can help chronically homeless people get off the streets and into supportive environments where their disabilities can be treated. Currently there are no beds regularly available to the city’s homeless residents, while the lone nonprofit rehabilitative center south of downtown Laguna Beach has limited sleeping space and strict rules that make it difficult for chronically homeless residents to qualify for one of its beds.

WASHINGTON - In the wake of three immigration detainee deaths over the last six months, Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) introduced legislation today to adopt humane and legally enforceable standards for immigration detention facilities. The need for Congress to pass such legislation is underscored by recent deaths of immigration detainees in Monroe, Louisiana, Farmville, Virginia and Central Falls, Rhode Island. This bill, H.R. 1215, Immigration Oversight and Fairness Act of 2009, provides basic protections for immigration detainees including access to medical care, phones, legal materials, and law libraries. It also ensures protections for unaccompanied children, sexual abuse victims, survivors of torture, families with children and other vulnerable populations.

"Unfortunately, the federal government has failed to exercise meaningful oversight of immigration detention facilities nationwide,' said Joanne Lin, ACLU legislative counsel. 'The ACLU regularly receives complaints from immigration detainees whose cries for medical care go unanswered. All too often, the ACLU learns of detainees who have died from both serious diseases such as cancer and mundane conditions such as bacterial infections when earlier intervention could have made a difference. Congresswoman Roybal-Allard's bill is necessary to introduce oversight and transparency into the immigration detention system.'

In recent years, the immigration detainee population has skyrocketed, now exceeding over 300,000 annually and approximately 30,000 daily. The explosion in immigration detention has been accompanied by growing numbers of immigration detainee deaths, numbering nearly 90 since the establishment of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2002. Many of these deaths involved young detainees in their 20s and 30s, with U.S. citizen spouses and children.

The cases of ACLU clients Raymond Soeoth and Amadou Diouf, both of whom were immigration detainees, highlight the importance of this legislation as a safeguard against forcible drugging. Both detainees were forcibly injected with a combination of antipsychotic drugs even though neither had a history of mental illness. Soeoth, a Christian minister from Indonesia, sought political asylum in America based on religious persecution. Diouf, a native of Senegal married to a U.S. citizen, had a stay of deportation at the time he was drugged. After the ACLU of Southern California filed a lawsuit, the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) ended its policy of forcibly drugging deportees, but stopped short of issuing regulations that would have given the new policy the force of a strictly enforced law.

'This bill will help protect the heath and welfare of anyone imprisoned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,' said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrants' rights and national security for the ACLU of Southern California. 'If passed, this legislation should help ICE change its institutional culture and become more accountable, paving the way for the humane treatment of those in immigration detention.'

SAN DIEGO 'In response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and other groups, the Department of Homeland Security agreed to release an HIV-positive torture victim from Mexico who was detained by immigration officials for nearly two years despite a judge having granted her relief.

Oscar 'Diana' Santander, who suffered torture in her home country at the hands of police and other government officials, was granted asylum and relief under the Convention Against Torture last May by an immigration judge. But the government continued to incarcerate her at the San Diego Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa, while it appealed a portion of the ruling. Although the grant of asylum was reversed by the Board of Immigration Appeals, the immigration judge recently reaffirmed the grant of relief under the Convention Against Torture. The government decided not to appeal that ruling and released Ms. Santander late last week.

Ms. Santander was represented by the ACLU's Southern California and San Diego affiliate offices, together with Casa Cornelia Law Center and the private law firm Greenberg Glusker.

'While we are gratified that the U.S. government finally agreed to end Diana's detention, it is shameful that the government detained an HIV-positive torture victim for nearly two years and wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars in the process. Diana will never get those years of her life back,' said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of the ACLU of Southern California's immigrants' rights and national security project. 'The government had no reason to continue to imprison a woman who had won relief under the Convention Against Torture. This case presents another stark example of the government's misguided addiction to incarceration.'

Santander first gained notoriety after she spoke out in the aftermath of the death of Victoria Arellano, another transgender immigration detainee who died of AIDS after the government failed to provide her with adequate medical care. Although the government never disputed that Santander was an HIV positive torture victim, it nevertheless fought Santander's release while it appealed the decisions granting her relief under refugee protection laws. As a result, the government incarcerated her for an additional nine months after she first won her case.

'The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has twice stated that people who have prevailed in their asylum applications cannot be detained for a prolonged period. That court has also twice held that foreign nationals detained for a prolonged period must be afforded a hearing where the government bears the burden to show that their detention remains justified,' said Bardis Vakili of the Casa Cornelia Law Center. 'It is unfortunate that the government chose to ignore the governing federal law for so long in this case.'

Santander was held an additional six months after her lawyers filed the lawsuit on her behalf.