LAS VEGAS – A U.S. District Court Judge denied a request by federal immigration officials to be removed as a defendant from a challenge to the City of Las Vegas’s use of unlawful immigration detainers to hold individuals past their release dates on Friday, June 13.
MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) and F. Travis Buchanan, Esq. & Associates, PLLC of Las Vegas, represents Arriba Las Vegas Workers Center, a non-profit organization that works with day laborers, domestic workers, and other low-wage migrant workers. The lawsuit challenges Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) issuance of requests known as immigration detainers and Las Vegas’s use of those detainers to extend the length of an individual’s detention in a local jail without court review. In 2023, attorneys amended a lawsuit against the City of Las Vegas’ Department of Public Safety (DPS) to add ICE as a defendant. In that complaint, attorneys argued that Las Vegas’s use of ICE detainers violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition against prolonged detention without probable cause because at no time does the agency hold a probable cause review before a judge or impartial decision-maker. In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Anne E. Traum allowed the Fourth Amendment claim against ICE, as well as claims that the policy violates Due Process and that detainers exceed statutory authority, to move forward.
“Our Constitution and laws guarantee certain rights to all persons, including immigrants, regardless of their status; that includes the rights at issue in this case,” said Thomas Saenz, MALDEF President and General Counsel. “There is simply no acceptable justification for not according and guaranteeing rights to immigrants that are afforded to all persons under the law.”
MALDEF originally filed the suit against Las Vegas DPS in January 2020 on behalf of two people who had been detained and Arriba Las Vegas Workers Center, an immigrant-serving organization that focuses on workers’ rights. Las Vegas DPS, which operates the city jail, is also named in the revised 2023 suit because it used ICE detainers to hold immigrants beyond the time otherwise justified in state proceedings. The detainers request that local law enforcement hold a person for no more than 48 hours past their ordered release date to give ICE time to investigate the person’s immigration status. But attorneys argue that Las Vegas DPS treated the detainers as mandatory and delayed the release of those being held for longer than their scheduled times so that ICE could pick them up.
“Holding individuals in Las Vegas City Jail past their release dates under the auspices of ICE’s illegal policy and practice must end now,” said Ernest Herrera, MALDEF Western Regional Counsel. “We are glad that our clients, including Arriba Las Vegas Worker Center, can proceed with challenging the unlawful practices of Las Vegas City Jail and ICE.”
Founded in 2017, Arriba’s work helping to train immigrant workers is directly affected by ICE and Las Vegas DPS’s policies.
“This decision affirms what we know, what we believe, and what the court had already previously affirmed,” said Bliss Requa-Trautz, director of Arriba Las Vegas Workers Center. “We have the right to sue ICE. We hold on to hope that both justice and the courts will prevail in the face of tyranny. Now more than ever, we have a moral imperative to take action to halt ICE’s lawless disruption of workplaces, our economy, our homes, and our lives.”
Read the order HERE.