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For Immediate Release
December, 04 2017, 01:15pm EDT
Contact:
ACLU of Florida Media Office, media@aclufl.org, (786) 363-2737
ACLU of Florida, SPLC, LatinoJustice Warn Monroe County Sheriff's Office to Stop Illegally Detaining Immigrants
The Monroe County Sheriff's Office must stop its unconstitutional practice of detaining immigrants so that federal authorities can investigate them for possible deportation, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU-FL) and LatinoJustice said in a letter today.
KEY WEST, FL
The Monroe County Sheriff's Office must stop its unconstitutional practice of detaining immigrants so that federal authorities can investigate them for possible deportation, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU-FL) and LatinoJustice said in a letter today.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) use detainer forms to request that sheriffs keep arrestees in jail on suspicion of immigration violation after they otherwise would have been released. The letter, addressed to Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay, informs the law enforcement agency that it has been keeping alleged immigrants in the Monroe County Detention Center, in the Florida Keys, based on a detainer form that federal courts across the country have explicitly ruled unconstitutional.
"Not only does this practice present serious constitutional concerns and exposes the county to lawsuits, but it also harms the local community," said Amien Kacou, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida. "As Monroe County continues to recuperate from Hurricane Irma, it should be focusing its efforts to maintaining the safety and cohesion of these communities, not assisting in the separation of families and the deportation of community members."
The version of the detainer form used in Monroe County has been shown to violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition on illegal search and seizure Merely investigating a person's immigration status does not provide a probable cause for holding someone, thus exposing the county to liability.
Local law enforcement agencies have repeatedly been held liable for illegally detaining people in response to this type of hold request. For example, Clackamas County in Oregon was held liable for detaining a woman for 19 hours under an immigration detainer and had to pay her $97,000. Similarly, Lehigh County in Pennsylvania recently settled a lawsuit for $95,000 for wrongfully holding a United States citizen under this immigration detainer.
The current form used by ICE no longer permits the agency to request a detainer hold when it has only begun an investigation. Even this form does not satisfy the Fourth Amendment, however, as it does not require a finding of probable cause by a neutral magistrate before detaining someone. Use of detainers also endangers public safety by discouraging immigrants from reporting crimes, and contributes to the separation of families.
"We urge the Monroe County jail to stop honoring this outdated and unconstitutional form immediately," said Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director at the SPLC. "Reliance on a form already found to be unconstitutional is an unconscionable attack on due process, and leaves Monroe County vulnerable to potential litigation."
"We urge Monroe county to immediately cease its practice of honoring detainers immediately. Not only does this practice expose the county to the potential of costly litigation based on violations of well-established constitutional principles, but also weakens the relationship between law enforcement and the community they serve." said Kira Romero-Craft, Associate Counsel in LatinoJustice's Southeast Office in Orlando.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
DHS Official Admits Agency Used Secretive Pro-Israel Group's Blacklist to Target Foreign Students
"The U.S. government is laundering repression through a private blacklist," said one pro-Palestinian news outlet.
Jul 10, 2025
Confirming what students detained by the Trump administration have suspected for months, a senior homeland security official on Wednesday admitted for the first time that his agency had used a website run by a secretive pro-Israel group that compiles "blacklists" of pro-Palestinian students as it worked to carry out President Donald Trump's policy of arresting international students for their protest activities earlier this year.
In a courtroom in Massachusetts during a hearing on a Harvard University faculty group's lawsuit over Trump's attempts to deport pro-Palestinian students, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Peter Hatch testified under oath that a task force he formed in March scoured a list compiled by Canary Mission, an operation linked to Israel's intelligence agencies, to compile reports on the students on the list.
Hatch, the assistant director of ICE's homeland security investigations department, said the team was ordered to rush an analysis of roughly 5,000 students listed on Canary Mission's website, which includes photos and names of students who have taken part in "anti-Israel events." One student listed participated in a student walkout at Harvard University in support of boycotting Israel, and another attended a rally organized by Jews for Cease-fire.
Such allegations were evidently enough to warrant Hatch's team compiling reports on 100-200 of the non-citizen students listed on Canary Mission's website. Hatch said the team relied on Canary Mission's list as well as a list compiled by another pro-Israel group, Betar Worldwide.
Hatch told lawyers for the plaintiffs in the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) lawsuit and Judge William G. Young of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts that his team's reports detailed the students' employment and travel history, criminal activity, and alleged support for terrorist groups such as Hamas. He said the students' use of phrases including "Free Palestine" were included in the reports as well.
The Trump administration has claimed students have shown "support for terrorist groups" simply by participating in protests against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza, where at least 57,762 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023. Nearly 70% of those killed in Gaza were verified by the United Nations to be women and children as of November 2024, even as both Democratic and Republican U.S. lawmakers have claimed Israel is targeting Hamas.
Hatch's team sent the reports on students to the U.S. State Department, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio later said Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil's participation in protests was detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests, after Khalil was arrested by ICE. Khalil was ultimately detained in Louisiana for three months.
Hatch testified that the ICE office used the lists compiled by Canary Mission and Betar "without a firm understanding of the methodology through which individuals came to be included on either record," according to The New York Times.
Five of the students included in the reports sent to the State Department have been named in the AAUP's lawsuit as non-citizen students who were targeted by ICE for their pro-Palestinian speech.
The AAUP and other plaintiffs in the case argue the Trump administration has imposed an "ideological deportation policy" by detaining and trying to remove Khalil, Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, and others.
Students have posited for months that Canary Mission's blacklists were likely involved in the administration's rounding up of pro-Palestinian organizers, with Sophie Hurwitz reporting at Mother Jones this week that Öztürk was detained only "after being smeared on Canary Mission's website, being falsely labeled as being antisemitic."
A judge who ordered the release of another student activist, Efe Ercelik of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said Ercelik had been jailed "almost exclusively" because he was included in blacklists compiled by Canary Mission and Betar.
Khalil's lawyers filed a Freedom of Information Act request after his arrest, seeking information about Canary Mission's role in his targeting by ICE. The group's anonymously run website includes an extensive report on Khalil's expressions of support for Palestinians and his protest activities.
But Hatch's testimony marks the first time Canary Mission's involvement in the targeting of students has been acknowledged by the administration.
Young ordered the Trump administration to provide partially redacted reports that Hatch's team compiled on students to the plaintiffs' lawyers on Wednesday evening.
As James Bamford wrote at The Nation in December 2023, Canary Mission is "a key intelligence asset for the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, a highly secretive intelligence organization that is largely focused on the United States." A profile of Palestinian American student Lara Alqasem was compiled by Canary Mission and used to prevent her from entering Israel in 2018; Alqasem was planning to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but Israel attempted to bar her from doing so because she was the chapter president of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Florida.
The pro-Palestinian news outlet Mondoweiss said the information disclosed by Hatch on Wednesday "is bigger than one trial."
"The U.S. government is laundering repression through a private blacklist," said Mondoweiss. "It's criminalizing dissent, undermining free speech, and exporting Israel's surveillance playbook into U.S. policy."
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Federal Judge Blocks Trump Birthright Citizenship Order, But Fight 'Far From Over'
"We are fighting to ensure President Trump doesn't trample on the citizenship rights of one single child," said a member of the legal team behind the class action suit.
Jul 10, 2025
The battle over U.S. President Donald Trump's attack on birthright citizenship continued on Thursday, when a federal judge in New Hampshire gave a green light to a class action lawsuit and blocked the Republican's contested executive order.
Advocacy groups including the ACLU, Asian Law Caucus, Democracy Defenders Fund, and Legal Defense Fund (LDF) launched the case last month, just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority limited nationwide injunctions—often used by lower courts to stop seemingly illegal policies like Trump's birthright move—but declined to weigh in on the actual order, which three different district judges had blocked.
"The court has sent a clear message: All children born on U.S. soil are entitled to the full rights and protections of citizenship."
Experts warn there will still be challenges to the class action route, but U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante—an appointee of former President George W. Bush—gave the groups their first win in the new case, certifying "a nationwide class that protects the citizenship rights of all children born on U.S. soil," with a seven-day delay to allow for an appeal from the Trump adminsitration.
"Class petitioners have demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits of their claims; that class petitioners are likely to suffer irreparable harm if the order is not granted; that the potential harm to the class petitioners if the order is not granted outweighs the potential harm to respondents if the order is granted; and that the issuance of this order is in the public interest," the judge wrote.
ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project deputy director Cody Wofsy, who argued the case, said in a statement that "this ruling is a huge victory and will help protect the citizenship of all children born in the United States, as the Constitution intended."
"We are fighting to ensure President Trump doesn't trample on the citizenship rights of one single child," Wofsy declared.
Aarti Kohli, executive director of Asian Law Caucus, noted that "since the Supreme Court's decision, parents have lived in fear and uncertainty, wondering whether they should give birth in a different state, whether their newborns would be subject to deportation, and what kind of future awaits their children."
BREAKING: Judge in new case challenging Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship grants class certification and blocks enforcement of the order. The injunction is stayed for seven days to allow any appeal.
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— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) July 10, 2025 at 11:25 AM
LDF senior counsel Morenike Fajana called the district judge's decision "a powerful affirmation of the 14th Amendment and the enduring principle that citizenship in the United States is a right by birth, not a privilege granted by politics."
"By granting nationwide class certification and blocking the executive order from taking effect, the court has sent a clear message: All children born on U.S. soil are entitled to the full rights and protections of citizenship," Fajana continued. "This is a critical victory for families across the country, and we will continue to defend the constitutional promise of equal protection under the law."
While welcoming Thursday's win for the plaintiffs, "and millions of families across this country, who deserve clarity, and stability," Tianna Mays, legal director for Democracy Defenders Fund, also stressed that "the fight to uphold the guarantee of birthright citizenship is far from over, and we will continue to advocate to ensure we keep that promise."
Though not directly commenting on the judge's decision, the Trump administration signaled Thursday that it will keep fighting to end birthright citizenship and impose the other components of the president's anti-immigrant agenda.
"The Trump administration," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told NBC News ahead of the hearing, "is committed to lawfully implementing the president's executive order to protect the meaning and value of American citizenship and which restores the 14th Amendment to its original intent."
After Thursday's ruling, according to the news outlet,
the Department of Justice referred NBC News to a previous statement from Attorney General Pam Bondi last week that followed another judge's order in a separate immigration case, saying a "rogue district court judge is already trying to circumvent the Supreme Court's recent ruling against nationwide injunctions." Bondi added in that statement, "the American people see right through this" and that Department of Justice attorneys will continue to fight for Trump's agenda to secure the U.S. border.
Bondi's statement last week was in response to a judge in Washington, D.C. blocking Trump's crackdown on asylum-seekers.
Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who argued that case, said at the time that the "hugely important decision" will "save the lives of families fleeing grave danger" and "reaffirms that the president cannot ignore the laws Congress has passed and the most basic premise of our country's separation of powers."
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UN Warns Millions Could Die in Next 4 Years Due to Trump Cuts to HIV Funding
"It's a ticking time bomb," said the executive director of UNAIDS.
Jul 10, 2025
UNAIDS, the United Nations agency dedicated to combating the spread of HIV around the globe, has issued a dire warning about the impact of the United States slashing its funding for foreign aid.
In a newly released report, the agency contends that the Trump administration's drastic reduction of foreign aid funding to the United States President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been a "systemic shock" to organizations trying to stop the spread of HIV.
"HIV programs across the world are struggling from the sudden, drastic reductions in funding for the global HIV response announced by the United States Government in early 2025," the report states. "PEPFAR had committed USD 4.3 billion in bilateral support in 2025. Those services were stopped overnight when the United States Government shifted its foreign assistance strategies. Disruptions are being felt across the HIV response and pose a huge risk of increased mortality, a surge of new HIV infections, and the development of resistance to the most commonly used treatment regimens. Urgent action and revived solidarity are needed to sustain the progress made and prevent a resurgence of HIV."
The report estimates that if American funding for HIV prevention collapses entirely, it would result in 6 million additional infections and 4 million additional deaths over the next four years alone.
"This is not just a funding gap—it's a ticking time bomb," said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. "We have seen services vanish overnight. Health workers have been sent home. And people—especially children and key populations—are being pushed out of care."
The report notes that countries that have traditionally benefited from American PEPFAR funding cannot possibly hope to make up the difference with domestic revenue and it calls on other nations to step up where the U.S. has stepped away.
"Low- and lower-middle-income countries... remain highly vulnerable," the report warns. "HIV programs in many of them are highly dependent on external financing and they are unlikely to withstand unplanned or rapid reductions in donor funding. This could lead to disruptions in essential services and weaken the overall HIV response."
Five countries in particular—Haiti, Mozambique, Nigeria, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Zambia—are highlighted as particularly vulnerable given that they received more than 60% of their funding for HIV-related programs through PEPFAR.
Regardless, the report said that the world is still closer than it ever has been to ending the threat of AIDS. But it stressed that low- and middle-income countries would nonetheless need annual funding of $21.9 billion USD to make that goal a reality by 2030.
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