ACLU Sued for Release of the Detainees held at ICE's Adelanto Center
LOS ANGELES — Today, U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ordered the release of six people detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County with medical conditions making them highly vulnerable to serious illness and death if infected with COVID-19.
The release was ordered by Judge Terry J. Hatter in response to a court filing on Monday (3/30) by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and the ACLU Foundation’s Immigrants' Rights Project and National Prison Project. The law firm Latham & Watkins LLP joined the case as co-counsel.
The detainees ordered released are: Martin Vargas Arellano, Charleston Edward Dacoff, Jose Robles Rodriguez, Luis Lopez Salgado, Jose Hernandez Velasquez, and Paola Rayon Vite.
Please attribute this quote to Jessica Karp Bansal, ACLU SoCal senior staff attorney:
"We are thrilled our plaintiffs will soon be home safe. But we are deeply concerned for the thousands of other people still in immigration jails that ICE's own experts have described as COVID-19 tinderboxes. The continued detention of civil immigration detainees in these circumstances is unconscionable — and unconstitutional."
Please attribute this quote to Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project:
"Immigration detention should not be a death sentence, but for our clients, it certainly could be. We are thrilled to see judges around the country affirm our position that it is unconscionable to keep people in civil detention under these circumstances. We will keep fighting for our clients in other detention centers and states."
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