Lawyers representing four immigration legal service organizations on Thursday launched a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York aimed at thwarting the Trump administration's reported plan to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants as part of a series of nationwide raids expected in the coming weeks.

The lawsuit, filed preemptively by the American Civil Liberties Union, New York Civil Liberties Union and law firm Munger, Tolles, & Olson, argued the due process rights of those immigrants require that they be offered an immigration hearing prior to deportation. The legal action appeared to come in response to news reports that broke Thursday saying that nationwide ICE raids of undocumented families—backed by President Trump and reportedly first thought to be happening in June—would begin this Sunday.

“The Trump administration's threats against immigrants run roughshod over basic fairness and due process,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “For the many families who came here as refugees fleeing violence, deportation is a death threat. We will fight to ensure no one faces this kind of peril without having their case considered in court.”

The litigation was filed Thursday afternoon in Manhattan federal court. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hasn't confirmed the raids, which were first reported Thursday morning by The New York Times. At least 2,000 immigrants are being targeted in 10 major cities, the report said.

A spokesman from ICE said the federal immigration agency does not comment on pending litigation. A request for comment sent to the U.S. Department of Justice was not immediately returned.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of four nonprofit organizations that provide services for refugees: Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Central American Resource Center, Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Public Counsel.

Those groups are afflicted by the raids, the lawsuit said, because they provide an array of services to immigrants, including those that could help them possibly avoid deportation. The more resources they have to devote to that specific task due to mass deportations, the less they have to provide other services, the complaint argued.

The Trump administration has reportedly argued that it can lawfully deport the immigrants targeted by the raids because they failed to initially appear in immigration court.

But the immigration services groups and their lawyers argue that thousands of members of undocumented families being targeted in the raids have never had a rightful day in court because the federal government's system for providing notice of immigration court dates to migrants is deeply flawed and “in chaos.”

“In thousands of cases, the government mailed notices to incorrect addresses; sent them with no date or time; and set hearings for dates—including weekends—when no hearings were being held at all,” the lawsuit states.

It continues, “Even when the government sent notices to the right address for a real hearing, it repeatedly sent them too late, for locations unreasonably far from immigrants' homes. Notices thus arrived either after the date set for a hearing or just a few days before, requiring indigent families to immediately travel across the country to hearings in distant states.”

Immigrants have the option to file a “motion to reopen,” which would allow them to argue that an order for their removal was entered in error. According to Thursday's lawsuit, it is expected that the government defendants will “contend,” in response to the preemptive legal action, “that any individual improperly ordered removed in absentia can and must file a written 'motion to reopen.'”

But many immigrants, the lawsuit argued, wouldn't be able to do so without an attorney because of their inability to navigate such a complex document in English.

“The Due Process Clause and the refugee protection laws therefore require that these individuals have an opportunity, before they are deported, to appear before an immigration judge, where the judge can speak to them to determine whether rescission of their order is warranted,” the lawsuit said.

Among defendants named in the lawsuit are U.S. Attorney General William Barr; Kevin McAleenan, director of Homeland Security; and Mark Morgan, acting director of ICE.

The alleged problem with lack of due process has been caused, in part, by an influx of families and children fleeing their countries of origin in recent years to escape violence. Those immigrants came mainly from areas like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the lawsuit said.

That's led to what's called “rocket dockets,” where the federal government has processed the deportation cases of those families on an expedited basis. That caused errors in notices sent to immigrants to appear for a hearing, the lawsuit said. In some instances, those notices were sent days before, or even after, the scheduled hearing.

When those immigrants failed to appear for their immigration hearings, their removal was ordered in their absence. Those are the same immigrants ICE is now planning to target in the reported raids, according to the civil rights and immigration services groups.

The lawsuit is challenging the planned raids on two main legal arguments. The first claims that the federal government will be violating the due process rights afforded to those immigrants under the Fifth Amendment if they go forward with deporting them sans hearing.

The second argument claims the federal government will be violating the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, which prohibits the removal of an individual to a country where they could face persecution.

“The Trump administration's plan to send families and children who came to this country seeking refuge from violence and abuse in their home countries, back to those places without so much as one opportunity to show a judge they are entitled under U.S. law to stay, is fundamentally at odds with what this nation stands for,” said Brad Phillips, a Los Angeles-based litigation partner at Munger Tolles.

The lawsuit further noted that the “government also entered thousands of in absentia [removal] orders against children, even though those children obviously had no control over whether they appeared in court.”

The lawsuit doesn't seek to stop the federal government from identifying immigrants that could be eligible for deportation. It's seeking, instead, to have those immigrants be afforded a hearing on their deportation before they're removed from the country by ICE.

Among its requested relief, the suit asks for a court order requiring the government to hold such hearings and determine whether the in abstenia removal orders must be rescinded.

 

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