November, 13 2018, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Will Lambek, Migrant Justice, (802) 321-8393, will@migrantjustice.net
Lia Ernst, ACLU of Vermont (802) 223-6304 x112, lernst@acluvt.org
Jen Nessel, Center for Constitutional Rights, (212) 614-6449, jnessel@ccrjustice.org
Liz Valsamis, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, (213) 229-7115, LValsamis@gibsondunn.com
Leah Lotto, National Center for Law and Economic Justice, (212) 633-6967, lotto@nclej.org
Juan Gastelum, National Immigration Law Center, (213) 375-3149, gastelum@nilc.org
Lawsuit Alleges ICE, DHS, and Vermont DMV Targeting Immigrant Leaders in Retaliation for Activis
Migrant Justice Leaders at Risk of Deportation for Engaging in Protected First Amendment Activity
WASHINGTON
Today, Vermont-based Migrant Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)--with the assistance of the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)--conducted an unlawful, multi-year operation to surveil, harass, arrest, and detain the organization's members and leaders. Those activities were undertaken in retaliation for plaintiffs' First Amendment speech and assembly and in order to destabilize Migrant Justice and its successful organizing of Vermont's immigrant farmworkers.
The lawsuit claims federal immigration authorities targeted Migrant Justice leaders and members since at least 2014, as the organization was engaged in high profile human rights organizing across Vermont and nationally. As part of a larger pattern of suppressing immigrant activism nationwide, federal immigration authorities infiltrated the meetings and private associations of Migrant Justice through the use of a civilian informant, invasively surveilled its members and mined their social media pages for information, and targeted, arrested, and detained no fewer than nine Migrant Justice members in direct retaliation for their activism.
"We come to the U.S. from countries with histories of political repression and we thought that here our freedom of speech would be protected as we stood up to defend our rights," said Enrique Balcazar, a Migrant Justice leader and plaintiff in the case, "It is clear that ICE is trying to silence the voices of immigrants in Vermont."
The lawsuit alleges that the Vermont DMV assisted ICE and DHS in targeting Migrant Justice leaders after the organization worked to pass Vermont's Driver Privilege Card (DPC) law in 2013, allowing state residents to obtain driving privileges regardless of immigration status. Documents obtained through public record requests show that when the plaintiffs submitted their DPC applications, the DMV sent their personal information directly to ICE, which compiled dossiers on Migrant Justice leaders, including their social media pages and media appearances. The records show DMV workers shared the plaintiffs' information with ICE for discriminatory purposes, out of racial and anti-immigrant animus.
"Time and again, we've seen that when Vermont officials get entangled in federal immigration matters, civil rights violations are the inevitable result," said ACLU of Vermont staff attorney Lia Ernst. "The fact is, DMV and other local officials have no legal authority to do immigration enforcement or to discriminate against Vermont residents--but clearly that message still hasn't gotten through."
A 2016 investigation by the Vermont Human Rights Commission found that the DMV misused the DPC program to engage in a number of discriminatory practices, including falsifying information on applications. Even after the DMV implemented policy reforms, however, officials continued to share extensive information about DPC applicants of color with ICE. DMV officials repeatedly sent what they referred to as "South of the Border" names to ICE for potential investigation, while referring to immigrants in racist and derogatory terms, and scheduled appointments to facilitate immigration arrests.
"Migrant Justice leaders have worked for years to thwart discriminatory policing by local and federal officials," said Trudy Rebert, a staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. "ICE and willing enablers with a history of anti-Latinx bias at the local DMV have resorted to weaponizing systems essential to community safety to target and suppress our plaintiffs."
ICE has detained four prominent Migrant Justice leaders who are named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. During the course of the arrests, ICE agents harassed and intimidated plaintiffs, referring to one as a "famous person" because of his activism, and named an additional member who would be "next." In detention, plaintiffs were forbidden from contacting a lawyer or anyone associated with Migrant Justice. Two plaintiffs were detained soon after leaving the Migrant Justice office. As part of its campaign to undermine Migrant Justice, ICE spread false information about the organization, including that staff were collaborating with the agency to locate and detain immigrant community members.
The lawsuit alleges that the arrests and detention are part of an alarming national trend of retaliation against immigrant rights activists. Since 2016, ICE has arrested no fewer than twenty high-profile leaders around the country.
"The federal government crackdown on political speech in Vermont is part of a national campaign to silence immigrants who criticize government officials and their policies." said National Center for Law and Economic Justice Senior Attorney Leah Lotto. "Using their power to physically arrest and detain outspoken leaders is a shocking violation of our constitution."
Plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to prevent Defendants from targeting, surveilling, infiltrating, spreading disinformation, arresting, and detaining Migrant Justice members, and to prohibit DMV employees from racially motivated sharing of information with federal immigration enforcement agencies.
"The federal government targeted Migrant Justice because of its historic and unrelenting advocacy on behalf of a vulnerable immigrant community," said Center for Constitutional Rights Staff Attorney Angelo Guisado. "In so doing, ICE has weaved its way into the tortured counterpane of U.S. policy used to suffocate grassroots activism and to exert control over communities of color."
On Wednesday, Migrant Justice members and supporters marched from the organization's Burlington office to the federal courthouse, hand-delivering the lawsuit while rallying outside. Migrant Justice leaders and attorneys addressed the crowd. In recent years, the federal building has been a frequent site of such rallies; at times, hundreds have filled the streets to denounce immigration arrests and call for the release of detained community members.
"The rule of law applies to everyone, regardless of one's particular political position," said Joel Cohen, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. "An arm of the government should never be used to stifle the rights of speech and assembly or to discriminate against individuals based on their race or perceived immigration status."
Plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU of Vermont, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, the National Immigration Law Center, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
(212) 614-6464LATEST NEWS
US Dodges Growing Calls for Probe of Mass Graves at Gaza Hospitals
"Somehow I don't think the U.S. State Department would defer to Russia as a credible source to investigate itself if a mass grave were discovered in Ukrainian territory it had occupied," said one legal expert.
Apr 24, 2024
While continuing to give Israel billions of dollars in support to wage war on the Gaza Strip, the Biden administration this week has declined to join the growing global demands for an international probe into mass graves discovered at hospitals in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Two journalists on Tuesday questioned Vedant Patel, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, about the administration's response to the hundreds of bodies found at Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis as well as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk's call for an independent investigation.
"Would you support such an independent investigation?" Said Arikat asked during a press briefing. Patel responded, "Right now, Said, we are asking for more information... That is squarely where we are leaving the conversation."
Patel added that "I don't have any details to match, confirm, or offer as it relates to that. We're aware of those reports, and we have asked the government of Israel for additional clarity and information. And that's where I'm at."
When Said asked a follow-up about potential U.S. support for a probe, Patel reiterated that the administration is awaiting information from the Israeli government.
Later, Niall Stanage asked Patel to explain U.S. "resistance" to supporting a probe, the spokesperson insisted that "it's not about resistance to this particular situation, it is me not wanting to speak in detail about something which Said posed as a hypothetical question when, from the United States' perspective, I don't have any additional information on this aside from the public reporting."
After Patel again stressed that the administration has asked Israel for more information, Stanage inquired, "And do you believe the government of Israel is a credible source in enlightening you?"
The spokesperson interrupted Stanage to say, "We do."
While supporting the six-month Israeli assault on Gaza that the International Court of Justice has found to be plausibly genocidal, the Biden administration is also arming Ukrainians' resistance to a Russian invasion. Brian Finucane, a senior adviser for the Crisis Group's U.S. program and a former legal adviser at the State Department, pointed to the latter.
"Somehow I don't think the U.S. State Department would defer to Russia as a credible source to investigate itself if a mass grave were discovered in Ukrainian territory it had occupied," Finucane said on social media in response to Stanage's questioning.
Meanwhile, European Union spokesperson Peter Stano made clear Tuesday that the E.U. supports an independent probe.
"This is something that forces us to call for an independent investigation of all the suspicions and all the circumstances, because indeed it creates the impression that there might have been violations of international human rights committed," Stano said. "That's why it's important to have independent investigation and to ensure accountability."
Human rights groups around the world joined the call for an independent investigation on Wednesday, as the official death toll in Gaza hit 34,262 with 77,229 people injured and thousands more missing and presumed dead beneath the rubble.
In an Arabic statement translated by Al Jazeera, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that the number of bodies found in the mass graves is "alarming, and requires urgent international action, including the formation of an independent international investigation committee."
The group added that some of those killed were subjected to "premeditated murder as well as arbitrary and extrajudicial executions while they were detained and handcuffed."
Amnesty International senior director of research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement that "the harrowing discovery of these mass graves underscores the urgency of ensuring immediate access for human rights investigators, including forensic experts, to the occupied Gaza Strip to ensure that evidence is preserved and to carry out independent and transparent investigations with the aim of guaranteeing accountability for any violations of international law."
"Lack of access for human rights investigators to Gaza has hampered effective investigations into the full scale of the human rights violations and crimes under international law committed over the past six months, allowing for the documentation of just a tiny fraction of these abuses," she noted. "Without proper investigations to determine how these deaths took place or what violations may have been committed, we may never find out the truth of the horrors behind these mass graves."
Guevara Rosas continued:
Mass grave sites are potential crime scenes offering vital and time-sensitive forensic evidence; they must be protected until professional forensic experts with the necessary skills and resources can safely carry out adequate exhumations and accurate identification of remains.
The absence of forensic experts and the decimation of Gaza's medical sector as a result of the war and Israel's cruel blockade, along with the lack of availability of the necessary resources for the identification of bodies such as DNA testing, are huge obstacles to the identifications of remains. This denies those killed the opportunity to have a dignified burial and deprives families with relatives missing or forcibly disappeared the right to know and to justice—leaving them in a limbo of uncertainty and anguish.
Noting that the International Court of Justice directed Israel to preserve evidence in its initial genocide case order, Guevara Rosas said that "amid a total vacuum of accountability and mounting evidence of war crimes in Gaza, Israeli authorities must ensure they comply with the ICJ ruling by granting immediate access to independent human rights investigators and ensuring that all evidence of violations is preserved."
"Third states must pressure Israel to comply with the ICJ orders by allowing the immediate entry into the Gaza Strip of independent human rights investigators and forensic experts, including the U.N.-appointed Commission of Inquiry and investigators of the International Criminal Court," she added. "There can be no truth and justice without proper, transparent independent investigations into these deaths."
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Sanders Launches Probe of 'Outrageously Overpriced' Ozempic and Wegovy
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chair said that the popular medications "will not do any good for the millions of patients who cannot afford them."
Apr 24, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday opened an investigation into an "outrageously overpriced" medication manufactured by a Denmark-based company whose value by market capitalization is larger than the Scandinavian country's gross domestic product.
Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, sent a letter to Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, CEO of Novo Nordisk. The company makes semaglutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist used to treat Type 2 diabetes under the brand name Ozempic and, when sold as Wegovy, to treat obesity in adults with at least one weight-related comorbidity.
"The scientists at Novo Nordisk deserve great credit for developing these drugs that have the potential to be a game-changer for millions of Americans struggling with Type 2 diabetes and obesity," Sanders acknowledged. "As important as these drugs are, they will not do any good for the millions of patients who cannot afford them."
"Further, if the prices for these products are not substantially reduced they also have the potential to bankrupt Medicare, Medicaid, and our entire healthcare system," he added.
Sanders continued:
Today, Novo Nordisk is charging patients in the United States up to 15 times more for Ozempic and Wegovy than it charges patients in Canada, Europe, or Japan. For example, your company charges $969 in the United States for one month of Ozempic but just $155 in Canada and just $59 in Germany. Further, Novo Nordisk charges Americans $1,349 for one month Wegovy but just $140 in Germany and just $92 in the United Kingdom.
"Meanwhile," the senator noted, "researchers at Yale University estimate that both of these drugs can be profitably manufactured for less than $5 a month."
"The result of these astronomically high prices is that Ozempic and Wegovy are out of reach for millions of Americans who need them," Sanders said. "Unfortunately, Novo Nordisk's pricing has turned drugs that could improve people's lives into luxury goods, all while Novo Nordisk made over $12 billion in profits last year—up 76% from 2021. That is unacceptable."
As of March 2024, Novo Nordisk was Europe's most highly valued company by market capitalization. Its $554 billion market cap is significantly higher than Denmark's annual gross domestic product of approximately $410 billion, according to International Monetary Fund figures.
Sanders also pointed out that Novo Nordisk is charging different prices for Ozempic and Wegovy, even though they're "the exact same drug."
"Novo Nordisk charges Americans with obesity nearly $400 more every month than those with Type 2 diabetes for the same product provided in similar doses," he wrote.
"The unjustifiably high prices of Ozempic and Wegovy are already straining the budgets of Medicare and Medicaid and severely limiting access for patients who need these drugs," the letter says. "Last year, researchers at Vanderbilt University's Department of Health Policy and the University of Chicago's Department of Medicine estimated in the New England Journal of Medicine that it would cost Medicare over $150 billion a year to cover Wegovy and other similar weight loss drugs."
"To put this in perspective, the cost of all retail prescription drugs covered by Medicare in 2022 was less than $130 billion," Sanders added.
"As chairman of the committee, I am asking Novo Nordisk to substantially reduce the price of Ozempic and Wegovy so that these important drugs can be available to Americans with Type 2 diabetes and obesity," he wrote.
Existing law empowers the government to step in to lower drug prices in service of the public interest. Under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980—legislation meant to promote the commercialization and public availability of government-funded inventions—federal agencies reserve the right to "march in" and authorize price-lowering generic alternatives to patented medications developed with public funding.
However, U.S. administrations—including President Joe Biden's—have been loath to exercise "march-in" rights.
Under pressure from the public and lawmakers led by Sanders, Novo Nordisk last year announced that it would cut prices by up to 75% for some of its insulin products.
Responding to Wednesday's letter, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America—Big Pharma's leading lobbyist—accused Sanders of "attacking an innovative company to advance a political agenda instead of addressing the real cause of affordability challenges."
Noting Novo Nordisk's bigger-than-Denmark market cap, Warren Gunnels, the HELP Committee's majority staff director, wrote on social media that the company "made over $12 billion in profits last year by, among other things, charging Americans $969 for Ozempic while it can be purchased for $59 in Germany and costs $5 to make."
"Our political agenda is to end this greed," he added. "Guilty. As. Charged."
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Texas State Troopers in Riot Gear Crack Down on UT Students' Gaza Protest
"Why do we even have these institutions of higher learning if we won't let students speak their conscience and protest?" said one University of Texas professor.
Apr 24, 2024
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates...
Civil rights advocates on Wednesday expressed alarm at a rapid escalation by Texas state troopers who descended on a student-led protest at University of Texas at Austin, which was organized in solidarity with Gaza and other U.S. college students taking part in a growing anti-war movement.
UT students gathered on campus at midday and were promptly given two minutes to disperse by state troopers, who had already been called to the scene.
The troopers were equipped with riot gear, with some carrying assault rifles and several stationed on horses.
Erick Lara, a 20-year-old sophomore, told The Dallas Morning News that the nonviolent protest transformed "within minutes" after the police began arresting demonstrators.
"I didn't think it would escalate this far," he told the outlet. "And I didn't think there would be this much police intervention from what's supposed to be a peaceful protest. Not very peaceful when there's a bunch of aggressors around, especially on horses."
The organizers called the gathering "The Popular University" and said it was aimed at pressuring UT to "divest from death."
The protesters walked out of their classes to demand UT divest from weapons manufacturers in order to end its complicity in Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 34,262 Palestinians.
Student-run newspaper The Daily Texanreported roughly 50 state troopers were deployed to stop the initial protest of about 150-200 people.
Ryan Chandler, a reporter for NBC affiliate KXAN-TV and UT alum, reported that there were at least 10 students detained.
"Went here for four years, never saw anything like this," said Chandler, posting a video of a group of police pushing one student to the ground and arresting them.
Joseph Pierce, a Stony Brook University professor who attended graduate school at UT, also said the escalation was an unusually "drastic response to students advocating for an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people."
"It is a response that did not occur when in 2005 we protested the anti-gay marriage bill; in the late 2000s when we protested anti-immigration bills; in the 2010s when we protested the open-carry bill," Pierce said. "It is a clear attempt at silencing Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish voices."
The students faced the state troopers in a standoff on the university's main street.
"This violence against peaceful student protesters at UT Austin is absolutely horrifying—and should be condemned in the strongest terms by every politician and mainstream journalist," said former New Yorker editor Erin Overbey.
UT media and Middle East studies professor Nahid Siamdoust said the university "brought out everything but the kitchen sink to make sure" students couldn't erect an anti-war encampment like students at Columbia University, New York University, and other schools across the U.S. have in recent days.
The university had informed organizers with the on-campus Palestine Solidarity Committee on Tuesday that exercising their First Amendment rights in support of Palestinians in Gaza would "violate our policies and rules."
"The freedom to protest is integral to our democracy," said the ACLU of Texas Wednesday amid reports of the crackdown. "UT Austin students have a First Amendment right to freely express their political opinions—without threats of arrest and violence."
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