MADISON— Voces de la Frontera filed a brief last Friday asking the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a District Court’s ruling to return their lawsuit challenging ICE detainers to the state Supreme Court, rejecting the sheriffs’ appeal to reverse the decision and remove the case to federal court.
The petition, brought by the ACLU of Wisconsin on behalf of Voces, was filed directly to the state Supreme Court in September of last year, and the justices agreed to hear the case in December. The sheriffs then tried to take the litigation out of the Supreme Court’s purview, filing a notice of removal to federal court.
In response, the ACLU filed a motion to remand, arguing that the sheriffs’ action was not permitted and requested the case return to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A judge in the Western District of Wisconsin has agreed, ordering last May that the matter must be adjudicated by the high court.
Eleven days after the ruling, the sheriffs appealed the decision to the Seventh Circuit. In its latest brief, Voces reiterates that the sheriffs failed to file their motion to move the case to federal court in time, a finding the District Court agreed with. The brief also asserts that the question before the courts is fundamentally a state matter – not a federal one – and should be resolved in state court.
“Even after the District Court ordered that our detainer case be heard in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the sheriffs continue to play procedural games in order to slow this case down and avoid litigating the actual issue at hand,” said Hannah Schwarz, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Wisconsin. “Every day, immigrants are being unlawfully detained in jails, torn apart from their families and communities. These delay tactics are not simply holding the case up in court – they are denying real people their freedom and perpetuating injustice.”
“Behind every ICE detainer is a person, a family, and a community whose lives can be upended by an unlawful detention,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera. “Wisconsin sheriffs should not be able to hold people simply because ICE asks them to. We will continue fighting to ensure that everyone’s freedom and constitutional rights are respected, regardless of where they were born.”
The lawsuit contends that honoring an ICE detainer constitutes an arrest, and Wisconsin law enforcement does not have the authority to make arrests based solely on ICE's civil administrative “warrants.”
ICE continues to send hundreds of these detainers to Wisconsin jails, and people throughout the state are being illegally held for days so that ICE can pick them up. ICE sends detainers even for people with no criminal records or people who still have charges pending in Wisconsin courts.
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