ICE Settlement Overview:
- Who: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reached a settlement with plaintiffs who claim the agency violated their constitutional rights.
- Why: The plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit challenging ICE’s warrantless arrests and vehicle stops. The settlement would introduce a nationwide policy restricting how those arrests and vehicle stops can take place.
- Where: The settlement was reached in Illinois federal court.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will face increased restrictions on its process of conducting warrantless arrests and vehicle stops if a class action settlement gets final approval.
The settlement between ICE and plaintiffs who allege the agency violated their constitutional rights was given preliminary approval by an Illinois federal judge. According to the settlement agreement, ICE will introduce a new nationwide policy ensuring warrantless arrests are only conducted when ICE officers have probable cause that someone is in the United States illegally and that the person is likely to escape before officers can get an arrest warrant.
ICE officers will no longer be able to stop vehicles unless they have a specific reason to believe the vehicles contain people who are in the country illegally, the settlement agreement adds, and officers can no longer falsely imply they are enforcing local vehicle or traffic laws and regulations.
“ICE officers may stop a vehicle to enforce civil immigration laws only if they are aware of specific, articulable facts that reasonably warrant suspicion that the vehicle contains an alien(s) who may be illegally in the country,” the agreement reads.
The new policies will also see officers document the circumstances of the warrantless arrests and vehicle stops and provide documentation on stops and arrests to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
Plaintiffs Allege They Were Victims of Racial Profiling, Statutory and Constitutional Violations
The class action lawsuit was filed in 2018 in Chicago following a series of warrantless arrests. The plaintiffs allege they were subjected to racial profiling and “statutory and constitutional violations resulting from ICE’s large-scale and other indiscriminate enforcement actions that caused illegal warrantless arrests and vehicle stops,” according to the agreement.
“ICE’s policy and practice of making warrantless arrests without the required individualized flight risk analysis is ‘final agency action’ that is ‘arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law,’” the plaintiffs argue.
If approved, the new policy would significantly curtail ICE’s ability to be making indiscriminate arrests in the community, “in people’s homes, in places of business and through vehicle stops,” Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center, who represented the individuals who brought the case, told Law360.
He added it would be difficult for ICE officers to prove an immigrant with deep ties to the United States was likely to escape as, “many immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades at this point have families, have jobs [and] have homes.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has agreed to consider granting deferred action to temporarily protect the named plaintiffs from deportation and for ICE to pay an unspecified amount of attorney fees, Law360 reports.
A fairness hearing for the settlement is set for Feb. 8.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Mark Fleming and Mary Harper of the National Immigrant Justice Center, Ivan Poullaos and Patrick O’Meara of Winston & Strawn LLP and Rebecca Glenberg of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ICE Warrantless Arrests Class Action Lawsuit is Castanon Nava et al. v. Department of Homeland Security et al., Case No. 1:18- cv-03757, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
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