Lawyers: immigrant mothers coerced to wear ankle monitors - Monitor
In a letter Monday to Sarah Saldana, director of U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the leaders of a volunteer lawyers’ project said they were “dismayed by the lack of transparency, and the coercion, disorganization, and confusion”... Among the irregularities cited were summons to courtrooms scrawled on yellow sticky notes, no counsel or judge present in court, and women being told that the prior word of immigration judges “has no value. Between 70 and 100 women were called into courtrooms at the 50-acre Dilley campus last week and told by ICE officials that they could be released with ankle monitors in lieu of bond, according to a motion filed by R. Andrew Free, a Nashville... ICE appears to want ankle monitors, which use global positioning technology, on the majority of women released, Free said in an interview. An immigration attorney in Denver, Laura Lichter, said that in her 20 years of practice she has never seen ICE add a monitoring device or impose other conditions after an immigration judge has set bond. Free said his client was among those called into a courtroom to sign the agreement, though a judge had recently reduced her bond from $7,000 to $1,500, which she’d planned on paying. A deportation officer said that even after her bond was paid, an ankle-monitoring device would also be placed on her, according to the motion. Source: www.themonitor.com
