Deja Vu: Greek Immigration Crackdown

Last year I wrote about Greece and the pressure they are facing to get their immigration system to conform with international standards, while dealing with a giant backlog of asylum cases and daily influx of new immigrants. I noted at the time that the current system was at the same time too slow and too cursory to be able to properly consider asylum claims, and that a large new grant from Norway might help them attempt to reform this system.

Evidently, they've taken a different tact.

Police in the Greek capital said they have detained 501 people in an operation they say will be repeated "on a daily basis" to combat illicit trade, illegal immigration, drug dealing and other criminal activities.
The majority of those detained were foreign nationals in a sweep of central Athens.

 As was noted previously, hundreds of asylum seekers in Athens sit in legal limbo waiting for their applications to be processed, some having waited 10 years or more. More than likely, some of these individuals have been caught up in the mass arrests and detained. 

This may be a popular activity among anti-immigrant crowds, who think all crime derives from foreigners, but it doesn't do anything to solve the essential issues: a huge back-log, arbitrary procedures, and wrongful detention.  Not to mention its hugely expensive and engages tons of government employees who could be, just to pick an example at random, going through asylum claims or granting residence permits to those entitled to one.

There are different ways of getting people off the street than throwing them in jail.

500 Detained in Athens Crackdown

Bedoons released on bail in Kuwait

Source: AFP

Remember the stateless protestors of Kuwait? The ones who were imprisoned, deported, or fired after gathering to petition the government for citizenship after 40 years of legal limbo? Well, the latest out of Kuwait is a positive development, at least for some of our heroes.

Kuwait's public prosecutor on Thursday freed 59 stateless people on $1,800 bail each after they spent 40 days in jail for participating in protests demanding citizenship, their lawyer said.
The men were questioned on charges of assaulting policemen, damaging public property and taking part in illegal gatherings, Fayez al-Oteibi told AFP

 There are still a large number under investigation and the government has still failed to propose an agreeable solution to the situation of the stateless, contending that the majority of the bedoons are actually secret citizens of another country. (And if they just deprive them of documents for a little longer, they can get them to admit it!) This seems unlikely, given that there are 105,000 members of this group and they would likely take advantage of their foreign nationality if they were able to.

All the same, this jail release is a good first step, and perhaps as the country keeps sustained attention on this issue they will mellow their stance and find a adequate, human rights based solution for these non-citizens.


Kuwait frees 59 Stateless Protesters on Bail (The Daily Star)

UK: Compensation for child migrants detained as adults

Good and bad news out the UK today as we learn of  major victory in a case brought against the Home Office on behalf of a class of 40 unaccompanied minors. The children were allegedly compensated 2 million pounds- the biggest single payout for an immigration case in UK history, according to the Guardian. So what did the government do to have to pay such a major settlement?

The case apparently involved "age disputed" asylum seekers-  unaccompanied minors that do not have proof of age, and therefore hover between two types of asylum services- those "appropriate" (at least under international law) for adults, and those for children. Normally those children are assessed by social workers who use a variety of factors. However, the problem seems to be that, rather than being given the benefit of the doubt, children were presumed over 18 until being able to produce evidence, and therefore detained at length awaiting proof.

Some of the children were locked up for more than a month. One boy was moved around the country and held in seven different adult centres including Dover, Campsfield and Harmondsworth during his 74-day detention. "I cried myself to sleep every night," he said. "Nobody explained what was going on and I never knew what was going to happen to me when I woke up the next morning."

The case was settled in 2010, but it took a FOIA request by the Guardian to get the information released publicly. 

The bad news? Despite the payout, the practice allegedly continues, bringing to light one of the problems with settling. (Gotta get that precedent, people!) Does this mean we have similar cases on the horizon? Or perhaps at the ECtHR?

£2m paid out over child asylum seekers illegally detained as adults

Non-Citizen News Roundup

U.S. Atty Fein at a press conference announcing the indictment, via AP

US: Federal charges have been brought against members of the police force in East Haven, Connecticut for charges ranging from excessive force and false arrest to conspiracy. The basis for the charges is years of harassment and violence against the immigrant community.

"They stopped and detained people, particularly immigrants, without reason, federal prosecutors said, sometimes slapping, hitting or kicking them when they were handcuffed, and once smashing a man’s head into a wall. They followed and arrested residents, including a local priest, who tried to document their behavior."

So despicable, but sadly common in other small towns in America, where picking on immigrants is a pastime as well as a source of income. (As many immigrants, lacking bank account, carry large sums of cash on their person.) Let's hope this action by the Justice Dept. sends a message to police officers like those in East Haven that their racial profiling and bullying will no longer be tolerated. 
NY Times: Police Gang Tyrannized Latinos, Indictment Says
CT.com: Feds Indict 4 East Haven cops in racial profiling abuse case, more may be on the way

Kuwait: 61 of the bidoon/ stateless protestors (that we discussed last week) are being imprisoned for an additional 3 weeks pending further investigations into the protests. The charges include assaulting police and instigating an illegal gathering, although the news out of Kuwait suggests if anyone turned the protests violent, it was police.
AFP: Kuwait detains Stateless Protestors for 3 Weeks

Australia: More than 50 persons in Australian detention are recognized as refugees but unable to leave due to having failed security tests. The security tests have expanded their definitions of threats in the last years, and having being classified as a threat most countries are unwilling to receive the individuals (understandably.) The refugees are not informed why they failed, nor are they accepted by their home country, leaving them in legal limbo without much hope of a resolution. As the Australian human rights violations stack up, you really have to wonder what their government is thinking.
ABC Sydney: Darwin refugees in limbo after failing ASIO tests

Two New Lawsuits Shed Light on Immigrant Injustice in the States

On the same day last week two major non-profit organizations filed suit in the US over fairly shocking circumstances relating to immigrants and refugees. If they win, we could see some excellent new case law on immigrant rights. Here's a quick run-down.

Florida Tuition Inequality
In Ruiz v. Robinson (complaint) the Southern Poverty Law Center is suing the Florida Board of Education for a policy that, according to the suit, "treat[s] United States citizen students who reside in Florida as “non-residents” solely because their parents are undocumented immigrants." The effect of this policy is to hike tuition prices up to out-of-state rates (i.e., triple the cost for residents), and moreover, to discourage children of undocumented immigrants from attending college. Here's an example of the effect of the policy, as seen through plaintiff Caroline Roa:

...After Caroline was accepted to Miami Dade College, school officials informed her that she did not qualify for in-state tuition, even though she had resided in Miami-Dade County since birth. School officials explained to Caroline that her residency for tuition purposes was based on her father’s legal residence. Because Caroline could not show proof of her father’s legal immigration presence in the United States, she could not qualify for in-state tuition rates. Unable to afford non-resident tuition rates, Caroline has not enrolled in college. Instead, she works two jobs in the hope of one day being able to afford college.

Interestingly, the class action suit takes a dual legal track- SPLC challenges the policy under the 14th amendment's equal protection clause, but they also bring a federal preemption claim under the Supremacy Clause. In other words, they argue Florida's attempts to deny residency to the children of undocumented immigrants represents an impermissible attempt to regulate immigration- a field squarely within the exclusive domain of the federal government.

In my opinion, the equal protection argument is a slam dunk- these children are clearly being treated differently then other similarly situated children on the basis of their parent's immigration status... its going to be difficult for Florida to come up with a compelling justification for that which makes logical sense. The federal preemption argument, on the other hand, is a touchy subject. It has been a bumpy road for cases using this claim before, and now more than ever, with so many pending challenges to state statutes regulating immigration in some way, it will be interesting to see how the argument fares. One could suspect this case makes the point clearly, that when states try to regulate immigration they end up doing things that hurt citizens as well as non-citizens.

Sex Abuse in Immigration Detention
The second case is being brought by the ACLU against a Texas corrections facility, workers there, and the ICE for allegations of sexual assault against immigrants detained there. (Oy.) Essentially, the ACLU found hundreds of such allegations after filing a Freedom of Information Act request with ICE and Homeland Security. Although such allegations were found in every state, Texas had by far the most, and is thus the focus of the suit. An example of one of the stories can be found here. (Warning: graphic.)

Even more tragically, the plaintiffs named in the suit were asylum seekers escaping sexual violence in their home countries. It is ridiculous that people have to face this additional hardship in detention centers and it is obviously a violation of their human rights and basic tort law. I think this case will have no problem succeeding, but it remains to be seen how to protect the thousands of immigrants in custody all over the US from such horror. One way may be a legislative angle- extending the Prison Rape Elimination Act to immigrant detainees. The Act, passed by President Bush in 2003, establishes a national commission to prevent prison rape, assists with data sharing, and makes prevention a major priority for each prison system-- except for in immigration detention.

Here is a petition from the ACLU to President Obama asking them, as a first step, to extend the Prison Rape Elimination Act to all prisoners in the US: "President Obama: Protect Women Held in US Custody from Rampant Sexual Abuse"

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What these two cases have in common is that they focus on rather non-contentious ways of preventing discrimination against immigrants. After all, the first case actually focuses on US citizens (though it arguably helps their undocumented parents), and the second reiterates a minimum standard for detention that should not even really be at issue, bodily integrity. There are much deeper problems facing the  American immigration system at the moment, but these two cases will hopefully be big wins that pave the way for more aggressive strategies in the fight to protect undocumented immigrants.