Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people deported to Mexico may get the chance to return under a settlement reached between two rights groups and immigration and border patrol agencies.
The settlement arose from a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) filed last year alleging that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection used threats and intimidation against immigrants facing deportation and either misled or coerced them into agreeing to so-called “voluntary departure,” under which people agree to leave instead of being deported, which carries stiffer penalties.
The provision about deportees who could return applies only to people from California, though aspects of the settlement could eventually be applied to how immigration officials handle voluntary departure nationwide, CHIRLA told Fox News Latino.
“With this settlement, the cowardly practice of coercing immigrants to sign a so-called voluntary departure notice has come to an end,” CHIRLA’s executive director Angelica Salas said in a statement. “Up until now, such a procedure became a de facto involuntary waiver of core due process rights for countless individuals who in a matter of hours sometimes were uprooted from their communities and expelled to their home country.”
The government admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement.
It is not known how many people would be returning to the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported, adding that advocates believe it would be “a small fraction” of the 250,000 people who took voluntary departure in Southern California between 2009 and 2013.Read the rest of the story HERE.
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