IRLI shows they have no right to release into America
WASHINGTON—Yesterday, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a friend-of-the-court brief in
the Third Circuit Court of Appeals urging the court to reverse a
lower-court’s order that 20 criminal aliens be released from their
detention in York County, Pennsylvania, because of coronavirus fears.
Petitioners
were detained, awaiting their removal proceedings, in the York County
Correctional Facility because they had committed such crimes as assault, assault with a deadly weapon, firearms offenses, cocaine trafficking, and money laundering. Several
had failed previously to appear for criminal trials or committed
additional crimes while out on bail, parole, probation, or other
conditions of release.
Nevertheless,
the lower-court judge granted their petition for a temporary
restraining order before the government even had a chance to respond to
it. In its brief on appeal, IRLI shows that this order was erroneous
because these criminal aliens chose their own detention. They are not
prisoners in the usual sense, but may always leave detention by seeking
immediate removal back to their home countries. Also, IRLI shows that
the proper remedy for the kind of petition they made is not release, but
improvement in the allegedly dangerous conditions of their confinement.
“It
is absurd that violent felons should be released into the public
because they claim their detention is dangerous, when they refuse to
escape that danger themselves by going home,” said Dale L. Wilcox,
executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “What they really are
claiming is not a right to be released, but a right to be released into
the United States—a right that Congress has denied them because of their
crimes. At most, they deserve safer conditions in detention. For the
sake of public safety, we hope the appellate court reverses this
error-ridden order quickly.”
The case is Hope v. Doll, No. 20-1784 (Third Circuit).
Posts
