LOS ANGELES - Many immigrants who have satisfied the requirements to become U.S. citizens are left in limbo for months or years due to slow processing of FBI name checks, according to a class-action lawsuit to be filed in federal court. The delays violate time limits in the law that are meant to reduce naturalization backlogs while ensuring national security.

On Tuesday, December 4, the ACLU of Southern California, the National Immigration Law Center, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, and the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson will ask a federal judge to enforce the time limits on name checks for people in the naturalization process. The lawsuit, Bavi v. Mukasey, names Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the FBI, which conducts the checks, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), which oversees the naturalization process.

'People's lives are on hold because they are in a bureaucratic black hole. They can't travel abroad without worrying they will be blocked at the border. They can't vote. They can't get business or school loans,' said ACLU/SC staff attorney Ranjana Natarajan.

An FBI name check is a routine part of every naturalization application, along with fingerprint and background checks. The name checks are particularly prone to cause delays because similar names result in many false 'hits' that are time-consuming to resolve. The checks can slow the scheduling of naturalization interviews as well as delay final approval of naturalization.

The USCIS ombudsman found that the FBI name check backlogs have grown worse over the past few years, and that the name checks themselves may have little value in identifying persons who pose a threat.

'The current USCIS name check policy may increase the risk to national security by extending the time a potential criminal or terrorist remains in the country,' the report noted. View the report online (pdf).

Thousands of Americans nationwide have been forced to go to court to unblock the delay of their naturalization cases. The government routinely fights or settles these cases rather than fix the underlying problems with name checks.

The plaintiffs in Bavi v. Mukasey include Alex Lee, 26, who was born in South Korea and emigrated with his family in 1998. He applied for citizenship in December 2006. Last Friday he watched in frustration as his parents and brother took the oath of citizenship - even though they filed their applications months later.

Another plaintiff, James Moorhead, was born in England and has lived in the U.S. for 30 years. He has awards from Congress and the city and county of L.A. for foiling an armed robbery. Despite his positive record, he has been waiting more than a year since his immigration interview was abruptly canceled last year.

Bavi v. Mukasey is one of several similar lawsuits that are pending around the country, and the first to address backlogs both for people who have had their naturalization interviews and for those who have not.

Los Angeles needs a new jail. That's what the ACLU/SC is telling county leaders. The decrepit, overcrowded Men's Central Jail puts inmates and guards at risk of disease and violence. The answer: Tear it down and rebuild it smaller.

The ACLU/SC supports calls from Sheriff Lee Baca and special monitor Merrick Bobb to demolish the sprawling jail near downtown L.A.

Senior Counsel Melinda Bird also urged county supervisors at a Nov. 27 meeting to think creatively about how to reduce L.A.'s jail population, now the nation's highest.

"Building a new jail is prohibitively expensive only if we assume that we must replace 6,000 beds," she said. "A new jail tower with 1,000 or 2,000 beds, constructed next to Men's Central Jail, will cost far less than renovation and come on line faster."

The ACLU/SC urged L.A. to follow the path taken by New York City, which shrunk its jail population by one-third during the 1990s through common-sense steps. These included faster processing of defendants in the criminal justice system, pre-trial diversion programs, and improved discharge planning for inmates with mental illness and addictions.

These reforms would also help end the department's addiction to stopgap measures such as early release.

"If we could speed court processing so that average length of stay was reduced by just three days, we would save 2,000 beds without resorting to early release," Bird said.

These alternatives keep the community safe, but are far cheaper than building prison beds.

LOS ANGELES - In fall 2005, Ken Stansbury and other Riverside residents were fuming over a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision involving eminent domain, the right of governments to take over privately owned land for projects deemed of benefit to the public.

So Stansbury did what California law allows: He started a petition drive for an initiative to stop the City of Riverside from taking land and giving it to developers. But before Stansbury could gather signatures to qualify his ballot measure, the city sued to halt the campaign.

Stansbury responded by filing a motion in California Superior Court in March 2006 under a law intended to prevent well-financed attempts to stifle free speech. California's anti-SLAPP law (short for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) has protected journalists, consumer groups seeking to expose industrial pollution, and ordinary people wanting to get involved in the political process. The Superior Court granted the motion and dismissed the suit, City of Riverside v. Stansbury, but a state appeals court sided with the city in October 2007. The initiative never appeared on a ballot.

Today the ACLU of Southern California, the Los Angeles firm of Bostwick & Jassy and Riverside attorney Richard Brent Reed filed a petition for review to the California Supreme Court asking it to overturn the Court of Appeals decision. The Supreme Court has 60 days to act on the petition.

'Riverside's lawsuit runs counter to California's tradition of direct democracy,' said Peter Eliasberg, Manheim Family Attorney for First Amendment Rights at the ACLU of Southern California. 'It sends a message that if you try to put an initiative on the ballot, you are likely to get sued and that the anti-SLAPP statute will not protect you, no matter how meritless the lawsuit. If the ruling is allowed to stand, initiative campaigns will be a game only the wealthy can play.'

The appeals court's decision would mean that an initiative's backers can be forced to defend the proposed initiative in court even before they know whether they can gather enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot. Stansbury and others like him could face thousands of dollars in court fees. 'That's expensive and undemocratic,' said Eliasberg.

'I'm not afraid of government,' said Stansbury, who has refiled the ballot measure. 'When the city decided to sue me, it became far more about democracy than about public use laws. This is an egregious SLAPP suit.'

Riverside is one of several California cities to sue initiative backers in an attempt to quash their campaigns. The ACLU/SC represents Jeff Furchtenicht, an Ojai small-business owner who filed an anti-SLAPP motion over two proposed ballot measures, one involving affordable housing and the other to ban chain stores from the Ventura County town. That case, Widders vs. Furchtenicht, is now in front of the Second District Court of Appeal.