The following contains the secret documents that U.S. District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith ordered released in October 2018, following the ACLU of Michigan's motion to release them. These unsealed documents show that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lied in order to keep more than 100 Iraqi nationals, and long-time U.S. residents, illegally detained.
Follow this case, Hamama v. Adducci, here.
The ACLU sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June 2017 on behalf of Iraqi residents and their families in the U.S., after ICE agents arrested more than 100 Iraqi nationals without warning — including many who came to the U.S. as children and who’ve lived in the U.S. for decades — in raids throughout Metro Detroit.
Greyhound buses, once a symbol of travel on America’s vast highways, have become rolling traps where U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents routinely board to unlawfully interrogate, detain and arrest passengers.
The agents, with the agreement of Greyhound, stage surprise boardings without warrants to question riders about their citizenship and travel plans. In many cases, all too reminiscent of police states, the agents demand to see a passenger’s “documents.”
By Britanny Hamama
Tonight, my mom, Nahrain Hamama, is attending the State of the Union in Washington, DC, as a guest of U.S. Congressman Sander Levin.
When my mom told me, I couldn’t believe it. I asked, "The actual State of the Union?”
I feel so thankful and overwhelmed that my family has not been forgotten, that the heartache and fear we have felt the past seven months matters.
By: Monica Andrade, Skadden Fellow, and Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Michigan
“What did we do to deserve this?”
“If they’re being deported, why are they still in detention? And how long will they be there?”
These are just some of the questions haunting hundreds of Iraqi families, whose loved ones have been held in immigration detention for months. Starting in June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement began conducting raids on Iraqi nationals with final orders of removal.
A federal court has again blocked the deportation of Iraqi nationals in the U.S. who could face persecution, torture, and death if returned to Iraq.
In an effort to remind the public about its First Amendment rights and to reassure immigrants that constitutional protections extend to them as well, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan on Monday launched a public-education campaign that features the First Amendment printed in Arabic, Spanish and English.
The “We the People” campaign rolled out with the unveiling of an electronic billboard featuring the First Amendment in all three languages posted on Cobo Center in downtown Detroit. The ad will appear on the billboard throughout June.
DETROIT – The Arab-American Civil Rights League and the ACLU of Michigan have announced that they will continue their lawsuit challenging the Muslim ban after a revised executive order was signed today by President Donald Trump. The revised order, which still discriminatorily prohibits the travel of some immigrants from designated Muslim-majority countries and halts the refugee resettlement program temporarily, was condemned by the organizations as a transparent attempt to continue the same policies that were already rejected by the courts as unconstitutional.
When toxic, lead-laced water flowed through the pipes in Flint, immigrant families were among the most severely impacted.
Because public health information was not initially made available in languages other than English, many immigrants—and the children of immigrants—drank, cooked, and bathed in the toxic water long after the state admitted the water was unsafe. For a brief period of time, state-run water distribution centers even denied water to individuals who did not have identification documents.
