Tenth Circuit upholds most of injunction against Oklahoma immigration law

The story is here.

This is not surprising at all. This law was poorly thought out in many regards. While the anti-immigrant think tank in Washington, D.C., who wrote this law can keep pushing these state anti-immigrant laws, what about the taxpayers of each state who have to foot the bill for these ill advised political experiments? That's right, the Oklahoma taxpayers get to pay for the bad checks written by these think tanks and the politicians who do their work. Why can't we pass a law requiring the legislator who pushed this law to pay for the legal fees? And, let's add the out-of-state think tank that helped him out and make them pay the bill too.

An excellent judge

Reg Gaston was a fine judge. He understood the concept of being an impartial decisionmaker and practiced it daily. Win or lose, all any good trial lawyer wants is a fair hearing. I always got it with Judge Gaston.

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Retired Special Judge of the District Court of Cleveland County Reginald "Reg" Gaston, 65, died Tuesday morning in Norman after a lengthy illness.

For more, please read. Please note there is no permanent link for this article. It will eventually no longer appear on page to which I've linked.

Poll saying Oklahoma high school students could not pass naturalization exam might be fabricated

Back in September, I posted this link.

The brilliant Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com points out essentially what a bunch of crap this survey was which disparaged Oklahoma high school students and our state's publication education system.

Thanks to Mr. Silver for debunking the survey results.

Tulsa County Sheriff policy regarding attorney use of interpreters

The interpreter policy of the Tulsa County Sheriff was obtained through an open records request.

Please note that in March 2009, the Tulsa County Sheriff started not allowing immigration lawyers to bring their multi-lingual staff into the David L. Moss Detention Center. This detention facility contracts with ICE to hold most of the immigration detainees in Oklahoma.

The policy was not reduced to written form until requested by me from the Tulsa County Sheriff.

The District Court of Tulsa County has an interpreter program to certify interpreters for court proceedings. Attorney visits are not court proceedings. This policy of the Tulsa County Sheriff denies immigration detainees their right access to their attorneys and their right of access to justice. Imagine if you were arrested in a foreign land and not allowed to visit with your lawyer in a language you could understand.

ICE has been notified of this policy since March 2009 but has taken no action despite it impacting the ability of attorneys to effectively represent their detained clients in immigration proceedings.

Tulsa County Sheriff Memorandum of Agreement with USDHS

This Memorandum of Agreement was obtained by me by making an open records request to the Tulsa County Sheriff.

Unlawfully detained man gets $145,000 settlement

The story is here.

I outline this area of law here.

I've seen citizens be detained unlawfully. I've seen permanent residents be detained unlawfully. I've seen persons in the United States on visas be detained unlawfully. I've even seen unlawfully present foreign nationals be detained unlawfully. The law in this area is fairly well spelled out. No excuses exist for jailers and state and local law enforcement officers to act "outside the law."

IAQ -- Immigration Alien Query

One of the procedures used by state and local law enforcement called “Immigration Alien Query” is outlined below.

August 4, 2007 three Newark, NJ college students were murdered and one seriously injured when they were shot execution style. Four suspects were arrested, one of which was in the country illegally and had been previously arrested and released on a rape charge. Had that person been identified as an illegal immigrant when he was originally arrested the murders may have been prevented. In an August 27, 2007 press release Governor Matt Blunt highlighted this case stating “We cannot be complacent about illegal immigration…We must be proactive to protect Missourians from harm and help prevent what happened in New Jersey from happening in Missouri.”

NLETS provides you access to a tool in verifying immigration status. This tool is called the [Immigration] Alien Query or IAQ. The IAQ is a NLETS direct transaction that sends information about a person suspected of being a foreign national AND under lawful investigation OR under arrest to the Law Enforcement Support Center or LESC. The LESC, operated by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, has a purpose to “provide timely information on aliens suspected of criminal activity and status information on aliens under arrest” (NLETS User & Technical Guide).

MULES users may access the IAQ by typing IAQ in the fast transaction line or from the MULES/3 directory taking Action 5-All Other, 3-NLET Directs and 15-[Immigration] Alien Inquiry. Required fields for an IAQ are ORI (of requesting agency), PURPOSE CODE (C or F), ATTENTION, REASON, PHONE NUMBER (of requesting agency), NAME OF SUBJECT, DOB, SEX, PLACE OF BIRTH (non-US), If subject is in CUSTODY (Y or N) and NCIC OFFENSE code the person is under arrest or investigation for. The LESC encourages the use of most appropriate NCIC offense code. The LESC also allows use of code 0399, Immigration, when conducting a query in furtherance of lawful investigative detention or general investigations. Fifteen optional fields follow allowing a more specific search. One of the optional fields, Alien Registration Number, is a key ICE file identifier and should be used if known. The final field, REMARKS, should include further description of the offense and any other information that might be of interest to ICE.

The IAQ is received at the LESC and manual searches of NCIC, III and eight ICE service databases are conducted. When the manual searches are complete the LESC sends the response to the printer of the terminal agency making the inquiry and to the local ICE office. Information received from LESC may advise that the subject has been previously deported, appears to be in the U.S. legally or illegally, is wanted by ICE for removal or appears to be deportable but not currently wanted.

The LESC reports that from October 1, 2006 to September 9, 2007 there were 4,505 IAQ transactions from Missouri agencies. During that same period over 600 LESC detainers were placed on subjects incarcerated in Missouri. Despite those numbers NLETS reports that nationally IAQ’s make up less than 1/10th of 1% of queries across NLETS. Operators are encouraged to become familiar with this transaction and make this critical information available to officers. Questions should be directed to your troop MULES trainer.

Source: Missouri State Highway Patrol Newsletter, July - September 2007, No. 07-03.

Other views: IAQ at work in Virgina.