Immigration agency confirms fingerprint-sharing program is mandatory

Immigration and Customs Enforcement official David Venturella started off a meeting with San Francisco law enforcement leaders on Tuesday with an apology. ICE, he admitted, had given conflicting information about Secure Communities, a program that shares fingerprints taken for criminal background checks with federal immigration enforcement, and whether counties like More…

When Rendition Victims Can’t Seek Justice

Via Kevin Drum, the Toronto Star reports that Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen captured in 2002 by U.S. officials and sent to Syria for a year’s worth of torture, has lost his appeal for a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Center for Constitutional Rights’s Maria LaHood More…

What Would the Obama of the Nobel Speech Say of the Obama of the New Flight Profiling?

I owe it to a press release for the Center for Constitutional Rights for pointing this out to me, but think back to the halcyon days of early December 2009, when President Obama accepted his Nobel Peace Prize with the following admonition:

We lose ourselves when we compromise

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Court OKs Pretextual Use of Immigration Detention

In a ruling that slid in quietly under the news radar, a federal court of appeals ruled late last Friday that the government can lawfully use immigration detention as an excuse to conduct criminal investigations into non-citizens if the government likely has the right to deport that person. More…

Mitch McConnell Channels Civil Libertarians on Gitmo Transfers

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appears to be taking a page from civil liberties groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights, using similar arguments to denounce the Obama administration’s decision to move some Guantanamo detainees to a prison in Thomson, Illinois.

Calling it “the latest in a string of More…

‘Changing the Zip Code of Guantanamo’

That’s a quote about housing Guantanamo detainees in the Thomson Correctional Center, courtesy of a statement from Tom Parker of Amnesty International. Judging from my inbox, the longer civil libertarians look at the Obama administration’s plans for Thomson, the less they like it. A measured response from Human Rights More…

Supreme Court Rejects Key Torture Case

The Supreme Court today issued a blow to victims of abuse by U.S. officials during the “war on terror.” The high court this morning refused to review a federal appeals court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit by four British citizens who claimed they were wrongly arrested More…

ACORN Wins Rare Injunction Against Defunding Law

In a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York issued a preliminary injunction late Friday afternoon to stop the government from enforcing a new law Congress passed that defunded the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The court found that the law likely More…

Gitmo Suicide Report Complicates DOJ Lawsuit Stance

How did prison guards at Guantanamo Bay overlook three men hanging from nooses in their cells for more than two hours, in what was supposed to be a super-high security prison housing “the worst of the worst” terrorists in the world?

That’s one of the central questions addressed by More…

Lawyers Slam DOJ for Arguing U.S. Officials Aren’t Liable for Torture Abroad

I’ve been following the small but growing number of lawsuits brought on behalf of torture victims against U.S. government officials for more than a year now, but the opening statement in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday on behalf of four British former More…