LOS ANGELES - The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project and Stanford Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic today won the release of three men held indefinitely while appealing their immigration cases. The men had been held between two and four and a half years without a hearing.

U.S. Immigration Judge D.D. Sitgraves found insufficient evidence that the three posed either a flight or safety risk and ordered them released on nominal bonds. The three may leave the Terminal Island Federal Detention Center in San Pedro as early as tonight.

"This is a victory for our clients who have been cut off from their families and livelihoods for years," said Ahilan Arulanantham, an ACLU/SC staff attorney. "It also sends a strong message to the government that it should provide hearings to the many other immigrants in indefinite detention who deserve to be released."

One man ordered released today, Reverend Raymond Soeoth, is a Chinese Christian who fled Indonesia with his wife in 1999 to escape persecution for practicing his faith. He was initially allowed to work in the United States while applying for asylum, and eventually became the assistant minister for a church in the Riverside area. However, when his asylum application was denied in 2004, the government detained him.

"I came to this country because it is a land of human rights and freedom, but now I have been inside this jail for two years, even though I have never committed any crime," Rev. Soeoth said last October, when his case was filed. "This is very hard for my wife and for my parish. I hope the government will let me out."

The Department of Homeland Security argued Rev. Soeoth was a flight risk, but the judge called that claim "disingenuous."

In the past two years, the ACLU has won the release of more than a dozen immigrants held indefinitely.

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Immigrants already face many hurdles to U.S. citizenship. But excessive delays at the finish line are turning the naturalization marathon into a slog for hundreds of permanent residents.

U.S. law gives immigration officials 120 days to grant or deny citizenship to residents who have met all the legal requirements for citizenship, including passing their naturalization exams and interviews.

A new ACLU lawsuit asks the government to start enforcing its own rules and give prospective citizens a timely yes-or-no answer.

"The government should stick to its timetable and stop putting up roadblocks that keep people from fulfilling their dreams of citizenship," said ACLU/SC staff attorney Ranjana Natarajan, who filed a similar case last year with immigrant rights groups.

In that case, instead of fixing the problem the Department of Homeland Security opted to naturalize our nine plaintiffs in order to dismiss the case.

The new case asks the government to address the underlying cause of these unnaturally long naturalization delays: open-ended FBI "name checks" that drag on for months and years without deadlines for their completion.

LOS ALAMITOS - The ACLU of Southern California and the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP filed a free-speech case late yesterday on behalf of a public-access TV host whose show was censored by the City of Los Alamitos.

The censorship happened after the City Council fired the independent board of directors who manage the Los Alamitos Television Corporation and took control of the nonprofit station. LATV Channel 3 is available to Time Warner customers in Los Alamitos and Rossmoor.

On several occasions, city officials capriciously cancelled programs, including interviews with City Council candidates two days before the Nov. 7 election. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court seeks an injunction preventing the city from censoring programs.

'There is no state-run media in the U.S.,' said ACLU/SC managing attorney Peter Eliasberg. 'You can't have the same officials who are subjects of a program deciding whether that program can air on public-access stations. We are asking the court to restore independent TV in Los Alamitos.'

The City Council dismissed the LATV board last August after a dispute over delinquent income taxes. (A council member called the firing a 'time out' to assess the financial situation, though the city and LATV board had cooperated to file missing returns in July.) The city completed its investigation, but the board has not been reinstated.

'The city council is playing politics with the public airways,' said plaintiff Alan Katz, who was on the LATV board and produces 'OC's West End,' an arts and politics program that has aired since February 2005. 'Given the city's past history with censoring programming it disagrees with, there is no reason to think it won't do it again.'

Katz taped a program in September with former LATV board members. The show aired twice before the city manager - who admitted she had not seen the episode - ordered it off the air, citing unspecified 'complaints' about its content. The episode was later returned to the air, then pulled again.

The producer of another show taped interviews with City Council candidates before the November election. The city's mayor, who is also a Council member, declined to participate. The show aired once without problem, but was swapped for local football games and other programs just before the Nov. 7 election.

Stations like LATV were created to give local communities a vital public voice as television moved into the cable era. LATV was incorporated in 1982.