The American Civil Liberties Union Monday praised a
judge's ruling forcing the government to disclose why it wants local
police to enforce immigration laws. The legal rationale is contained in
a secret memo, the ACLU said. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information
Act request last year seeking the document. The ACLU and other groups
that objected to the new immigration policy said that the government's
insistence on keeping its legal rationale secret has made it difficult
to evaluate the new policy or advise immigrants about its effects. In
his ruling, Judge Lewis Kaplan called the government's attempts to keep
the policy secret unpersuasive, and ordered the Justice Department to
disclose the memo by Oct. 12. However, the judge refused to order the
release of other material sought in the suit. The FOIA suit was filed
in 2002 after Attorney General John Ashcroft adopted a new policy
allowing state and local police to detain immigrants believed to be in
violation of non-criminal provisions of the federal immigration laws,
overruling past policy. [more ]
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