A judge has dismissed a case against four immigrants caught up in a controversial Fair Haven raid, saying the feds trampled on their rights.
Judge Michael W. Straus of U.S. Immigration Court in Hartford threw out the cases against four immigrants swept up in the June 2007 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid. He ruled that government agents were in “egregious violation” of the immigrants’ Fourth Amendment rights.
For four individuals, the judge’s decisions marks an end to a two-year legal battle that began when Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents swept into Fair Haven, arresting 30 immigrants on charges of allegedly being in the country illegally. The raids prompted rallies and accusations from New Haven’s mayor on down that the feds were terrorizing the immigrant community and retaliating against the city for its immigrant-friendly policies, a charged the feds denied.
Attorneys from Yale Law School have been representing 17 of those 30 immigrants. The attorneys have argued that ICE agents violated their clients’ rights by entering their homes without permission and questioning them illegally. ICE has denied the allegations.
But Judge Straus agreed.
“In considering all the evidence in the record, this Court finds that the Respondent’s Fourth Amendment rights were egregiously violated,” he wrote.
Such a violation terminates the case by disqualifying any evidence or confessions that agents may have gathered in their raid, since it was conducted in violation of Constitutional rights.
Read two of the four rulings here and here.
In one decision, Straus wrote, “Here, the raid was conducted in the early morning hours while some of the occupants, including a young girl, were sleeping. Agents forcibly entered, without warrant or consent, into a private home and then into a private bedroom. The agents failed to ask preliminary questions that might demonstrate probable cause or at least reasonable suspicion. “
ICE agents told a different story of what had happened. They claimed that they had asked consent to enter, and followed appropriate procedures.
However, the agents submitted their testimony by affidavit only. Government lawyers refused to call them to the stand or make them available for cross-examination.
The government’s decision may have worked against ICE in the end, since Judge Straus found a number of “evidentiary omissions” in the affidavits.
The holes in the affidavits were ultimately less damning than the refusal to put the agents on the stand. “The deficiencies in the Government’s threadbare submission are exacerbated by their categorical and unexplained refusal to offer or make available agents to testify in open court.” wrote Straus.
The respondents were thus unable to confront and cross-examine their accusers. “This due process requires,” Straus wrote. “Functionally, the upshot is that the Court can give but scant, if any, weight to these [affidavit] submissions.”
Straus wrote that the “scant evidence” presented by the government amounted to “unsubstantianted hearsay, and, at points, hearsay upon hearsay.”
“We’re all very happy with the ruling,” Anant Saraswat, a recent Yale Law graduate who has been working on the case, said Sunday.
Yale pursued a difficult strategy in seeking to suppress evidence on the grounds that it was collected in violation of Constitutional rights. This is the first time that Judge Straus has issued a favorable ruling on such an argument, Saraswat said. “It’s pretty rare.”
Judge Straus’ decisions push the reset button for the four immigrants involved, explained Saraswat.
“Legally, it’s as if this never happened,” he said “They’re back to where they started on June fifth, 2007.”
However, the government may choose to appeal the decisions, Saraswat said. Such an appeal would be a lengthy and complicated process, he explained. The Yale attorneys are in the process of appealing Judge Straus’ previous decisions against others of their clients.
Judge Straus previously ruled against 10 of the 17 respondents, and granted asylum to one. Last week’s decisions were on four of the remaining six respondents.The final two decisions are expected shortly.
None of the 17 immigrants who chose to contest their charges have been incarcerated. They are all free to remain in the United States while their cases are being decided.
Reached by phone, ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooly said only that “ICE doesn’t comment on pending litigation.”
When reminded that the cases had been decided and were therefore no longer pending, Gilhooly said, “ICE doesn’t comment on pending litigation or on issues that are before a court.”