ACLU Sues Feds Over Detentions of Mentally Incompetent Immigrants

(Aug. 2) -- The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights activists went to court late today seeking to force the federal government to protect the rights of mentally incompetent immigrant detainees -- at least one of whom, they say, languished in federal custody for nearly five years.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks to compel the federal government -- primarily the departments of Justice and Homeland Security -- to design a system that would identify mentally incompetent detainees and assign them counsel to represent them during proceedings.

Mentally incompetent immigrants are afforded those rights under existing laws, ACLU lawyer Ahilan Arulanantham told AOL News this afternoon, but the federal government has failed to craft a system to safeguard that those rights -- particularly for the indigent.

"The Supreme Court has unanimously recognized that people who suffer from serious mental illness have a right to appointed counsel," he said. "You can't have a fair hearing unless you have an attorney who can explain what will happen."

Arulanantham said the ACLU already went to court to force the government to assess the mental competency and appoint attorneys for two detained men. After losing lower court decisions, Arulanantham said the federal government simply released the men and argued that the underlying legal arguments were then moot.

"They're not ready to defend the legality of it, but fix the problem on a one-off basis, like a Band-Aid, and let it go on for everybody else," Arulanantham said.

The new filing, he said, is a class-action suit aimed at forcing the government to follow existing laws in dealing with all mentally incompetent immigrant detainees.

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, said officials there had yet to see the lawsuit and declined comment.

According to the lawsuit, thousands of detainees could be affected. It cited statistics from the Division of Immigration Health Services that in 2008 up to 5 percent of all immigration detainees -- as many as 18,929 people -- suffered from a serious mental illness. Overall, it said, six out of 10 immigrant detainees were without counsel last year.

Without set policies on dealing with mentally incompetent detainees, the lawsuit says, those with mental disabilities often spend more time in detention than others as judges order reviews that often are slow in coming.

In one of the earlier cases, Jose Antonio Franco-Gonzalez, 29, pleaded guilty to an assault charge and then was transferred to immigration custody for possible deportation. On May 23, 2005, under an Immigration judge's order, Franco-Gonzalez was evaluated by a psychiatrist and found unfit to stand trial. A few weeks later, a judge ordered his case closed, the court filing says.

Yet Franco-Gonzalez, with no case open against him and a pending family application for legal status, remained incarcerated for more than four years, until a lawsuit was filed seeking to free him, the filing claims. He was released earlier this year.