This item has been filed in | News
Print This Post Print This Post

Immigration Clinic Challenges Detainee’s Mandatory Detention and Wins in Untested Argument


1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading ... Loading ...
    Third-year Miami Law student Ross Militello was abe to give his client's mother good news: Her daughter was released from natatory detention.

    Third-year Miami Law student Ross Militello was able to give his client’s mother good news: Her daughter was released from mantatory detention.

    Special to UM News

     CORAL GABLES, Fla. (February 13, 2014) School of Law Immigration Clinic students Ian Shaw, Lindsay Adkin, and Ross Militello petitioned for and won the release of a Haitian woman who had been held in immigration detention for more than a year. In granting the students’ petition, U.S. District Court Judge Cecilia Altonaga ordered their client eligible for a bond hearing. The bond hearing was held in immigration court, and the judge ordered the client released.

    “The case was especially challenging because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has not yet ruled on the legal challenge we raised,” said third-year law student Shaw, who worked on the case over the summer.

    Under immigration law, certain immigrants are held without bond while their immigration cases are pending. The Immigration Clinic students challenged this mandatory detention provision, arguing that prolonged detention without bond violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of due process.

    The U.S. Attorney’s office has filed an appeal to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

    Second-year student Adkin and third-year Militello wrote the response to the federal government’s opposition to the petition. “When the petition was granted, I was excited to see that our constitutional argument had resonated with the judge but quickly realized that we still had another hurdle,” said Adkin. “Our client was not released from detention until a successful bond hearing. The real victory only came when our client was released in time to be with her family for the holidays.”

    “I am thrilled for the client and proud to have had the opportunity to work on stopping indefinite pre-removal order detention,” said Militello, who represented the client in immigration court for the bond hearing in late December.

    “To our knowledge, this is the first case in Florida in which a district court judge has ruled that the detention statute must be read in line with the U.S. Constitution to limit detention to a reasonable period of time,” said Rebecca Sharpless, director of the Immigration Clinic. “I’m impressed with how effectively our students were able to brief the issues in this case. I look forward to working with students to defend the district court’s opinion on appeal.”

    The Immigration Clinic is part of UM Law’s Clinical Program in which second- and third-year students represent clients and work on advocacy projects.  Applications are now being accepted for enrollment in a clinic over the summer or next year (fall and spring). The online application is available on the Clinical Program’s website.

     

    Comments are closed.

    • Related Stories
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Subscribe
    • Subscribe to the Veritas RSS Feed
      Get updates to all of the latest Veritas posts by clicking the logo at the right.

      You can also subscribe to specific categories by browsing to a particular section on our site and clicking the RSS icon below each section's header.

    UM Facebook

    UM Twitter