| ACLU of Southern California

Read the 2020 ACLU SoCal Annual Report

Dear Friends,

Thank you! Your continued investment in the ACLU proved more critical than ever this past year: 2019 brought unprecedented challenges, and 2020 has forced us to be increasingly nimble and strategic as we combat systems of oppression during this time of extreme uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of all Californians. Like many of you, ACLU staff have been working remotely since mid-March, while still carrying out a robust agenda to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties here in Southern California and across the country.

As the map on the front of this poster demonstrates, the ACLU’s reach within the nation’s most populous state is immense. The ACLU of Southern California and our fellow affiliates in Northern California and San Diego together have 9 offices throughout the state serving the nearly 40 million people who call California home. For this year’s annual report, we aim to illustrate the impact of your support in Southern California and statewide, highlighting six key examples of the people you are helping and the systems you are transforming through your generosity. Your partnership also secured these hard-fought wins this past year:

We co-sponsored and championed bills signed into law by Governor Newson that will repeal 23 of the most harmful criminal system fees in California, and ensure job-protected leave for Californians who work for an employer with five or more employees to bond with a newborn or care for a seriously ill family member or themselves.
We filed lawsuits in two county jails and two federal prisons in Southern California to reduce their populations and ensure proper social distancing and sanitation in response to COVID-19.
After years of advocacy, and in partnership with a broad coalition, we secured an end to transfers of people in custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to immigration authorities.
In our litigation against Dignity Health on behalf of Evan Minton, a transgender man who was denied medical care because of his gender identity, we received a positive ruling from the California Court of Appeal confirming that it is illegal discrimination for a hospital to deny someone care simply because they are transgender.
As part of our work to secure consistent and robust investments in permanent supportive housing and affordable housing to end homelessness in California, we helped lead advocacy for the state and counties to use COVID-19 emergency housing investments to expand safe housing options.
We filed a class action lawsuit to force ICE agents to stop relying on deception to trick community members to open their doors and allow agents into their homes without judicial warrants.

In addition to pivoting our advocacy to virtual settings, including video court arguments and meetings with legislators, we also engaged with our membership base virtually — and saw historic turnout. Our online training sessions and advocacy briefings garnered greater turnout than in pre-COVID times as many ACLU members and supporters sought ways to engage while social distancing. Despite COVID, we also leveraged our People Power in Sacramento: our Virtual Lobby Day in August yielded 162 participants from across California who engaged in 28 lobby visits on ACLU priority bills!

Nationwide, we said we would see the Trump administration in court, and we’ve kept our promise and then some. Our team has filed 400 legal actions, and counting, since Inauguration Day. When COVID hit, ACLU staff responded swiftly, recognizing the profound danger the pandemic posed to vulnerable populations and our democracy. In the face of this protracted crisis, the ACLU has filed 192 pandemic-related legal actions focused on securing the release of vulnerable populations in detention, protecting our right to vote, demanding equal access to education, ensuring free speech, and stopping government authorities from preventing abortion care under the guise of public health.

This pandemic has laid bare the systemic oppression that is at the root of inequality in America. In the wake of the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and countless other Black, brown, and Indigenous people, the ACLU deepened support of and partnership with grassroots Black-led organizations to elevate the national spotlight on policing and protests and reimagine what public safety looks like. The ACLU remains dedicated to ending the nightmare of police brutality once and for all.

The stakes this November could not be higher. The ACLU has committed its full might to protecting voting rights and holding accountable the political leaders and lawmakers who cynically refuse to authorize or fund no-excuse mail-in voting, thereby forcing people to choose between their right to vote and their health. Here in California, we are working hard to target low propensity voters with information about how to vote, combat negative and harmful messages about mail-in voting, and educate the community on the importance of voting down-ballot.

The future remains uncertain, but the ACLU’s vision is crystal clear. As we have every day in our 100 year history, we will respond effectively to emerging challenges while continuing to push forward our proactive agenda of a more just and fair America for everyone. Thank you for standing with the ACLU and making this work possible.

In solidarity, with gratitude,

Hector O. Villagra
Executive Director

Read the 2020 ACLU SoCal Annual Report

Date

Monday, October 19, 2020 - 2:00pm

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Read more about Annual Report 2019 - 2020

I work as a registered nurse in an intensive care unit in Southern California. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, I’ve been working alongside my colleagues as we try to save the lives of the sickest patients and comfort their families. The hours have been long, and we have all seen more than our share of sorrow.

Fortunately, for most of the pandemic I had my husband to lean on. It was comforting to know that while I was in the unit, he was at home caring for our two young children and that when I came home he would be there to support me.

That changed in July, when ICE detained him during a routine check-in. Now they are saying that he will be deported to Pakistan as soon as they are able to put him on a flight. I need your help to try and stop that from happening.

Amir and I were introduced to each other by a mutual friend in New York. I loved listening to him talk. He was so knowledgeable and interesting. In Pakistan he had been a doctor, later coming to the United States on a student visa to pursue a PhD at the University of Texas in environmental science. While he was there, he started dating a woman who eventually became his first wife.

Then 9/11 happened. As a Pakistani Muslim, Amir suddenly became a target of the FBI due to his research into bioluminescent bacteria, and agents showed up at his door, interrogated him, and took him away. It took them a few weeks to realize their suspicions were baseless and though they never acknowledged it, based on discriminatory profiling. Unfortunately, in the months prior to this incident, he and his wife had become estranged. As a result, he was then transferred from FBI custody to ICE, where an officer told him that the collapse of his marriage had made him deportable.

For three years, Amir fought to stay in the U.S. from the inside of a detention facility. He taught himself immigration law, filing over 200 cases on behalf of other immigrants while also dealing with his own case. Eventually, he was released after a custody review.

But Amir’s troubles with ICE didn’t end there. Every time they could, they detained him again, hoping that they would be able to get documents from Pakistan that would allow them to send him back.

Despite this ordeal, Amir and I fell in love, moved to California, and started our family. He told me about the problems he’d had with ICE, but I didn’t care — I believed we would find a way to work it out.

Now we have two children, one of whom is a year and a half old and another who is six. Every summer, Amir has dutifully checked in with ICE, who have been issuing him temporary work permits and allowing him to remain in the country with us. He started a business, and has been a taxpayer and member of the community here.

I wanted Amir to apply for a marriage visa for us, but he feared that it would anger ICE and lead to his deportation. His time in detention psychologically scarred him and left him afraid of what might happen if he rocked the boat.

This past July, when Amir went to his check-in with ICE, they didn’t let him leave. Without warning, they detained him, saying that they had obtained documents from Pakistan that would allow him to be deported, and that they would be doing so as soon as they could.

An ICU nurse needs your help to stop her husband from being deported by ICE.

Urooj Alavi. Photo by Wey Wang for the ACLU.

The months since Amir’s detention have been devastating for me and my family. I cannot stop working — my colleagues need me, and now that my husband’s income is gone, I am the sole breadwinner. When I am working, my children are in the care of a babysitter, but if anything were to happen to me they would have nowhere to go. Already, two other nurses at my ICU have become sick with COVID-19.

To make matters worse, last week I received horrible news. Amir had been complaining of the lack of precautions in the Adelanto Detention Center, a privately run facility that has a contract with ICE to hold immigrants. He told me that there was no social distancing and that they were often packed into holding cells without regard for anyone’s safety.

Now, he has contracted COVID-19.

Hearing of his treatment since he became sick has been horrifying. Despite his positive diagnosis at Adelanto, ICE seems to have covered up the test results before transferring him to another facility in Arizona, where he once again tested positive. Now his condition has worsened. The last time we spoke, he told me that his fever had reached 104 degrees.

As a medical professional who deals with COVID-19 every day, I am shocked and appalled at ICE’s irresponsible conduct regarding the highly contagious virus. As a wife, I am terrified for my husband, who is a cancer survivor. Amir is a doting father and a gentle man. He deserves better than this.

Once Amir recovers and tests negative for COVID-19, ICE says that they will chain him in shackles and fly him to Pakistan, a country he has not seen in nearly 20 years. I’m not sure what will become of our family if that happens. They call me an essential worker, but how much can they really care about me if they are willing to treat us like this? Even though we are U.S. citizens, my children and I may be forced to leave my country and my job as a nurse, just to keep our family together.

Deporting Amir will not make America stronger, better, or safer. It will separate our family and cause grave suffering for me and our children. It pains me to know that we are not the only family facing this kind of treatment from ICE. I need your help to keep Amir here with us. Time is running short, but it’s not too late yet.

Please call the Florence Field Office and ask them not to deport Amir and tear our family apart: (602) 766-7030.