DHS must pay immigration attorney fees for unjustified ICE arrests
Legal costs mounting for ICE arrests
The federal government is now responsible for paying tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees for immigrants found to be wrongfully detained by ICE.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - The federal government is now responsible for paying tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees for immigrants found to be wrongfully detained by ICE.
Legal costs mounting after court rulings on wrongful ICE detentions
The federal government must pay legal fees for immigrants wrongfully detained by ICE during Operation Metro Surge after federal judges ruled the detentions violated constitutional rights.
Federal judges found that more than a dozen ICE arrests were not "substantially justified" and constituted "unreasonable" governmental conduct. Federal civil law requires the government to cover legal fees for immigration attorneys who filed habeas petitions arguing their clients were wrongfully arrested.
By the numbers:
The FOX 9 Investigators identified at least 18 cases where the government must now pay immigration attorneys for work done during and after Operation Metro Surge. The fees range from $1,125 in one case to $17,505.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota recently argued they shouldn't have to pay some of the legal fees and asked Chief Judge Eric Tostrud to hold off on billing the government until the Supreme Court can weigh in on the issue. Judge Tostrud denied that request.
Since Operation Metro Surge ended earlier this year, judges have ordered the government to cover more than $106,000 in combined attorney’s fees.
"There are federal judges out there who are holding the government to task," said Karen Bryan, an immigration attorney, who requests attorney’s fees for all habeas petitions she successfully filed.
The backstory:
A habeas petition is a legal filing that argues someone has been wrongfully detained and should be released from custody.
During Operation Metro Surge, the FOX 9 Investigators tracked an explosion of such filings that judges overwhelmingly approved.
‘These are people’s lives'
One of those cases involved Garrison Gibson, a Liberian immigrant, who was arrested by armed agents in his north Minneapolis home without a valid warrant even though he had an ankle monitor and was regularly checking in with ICE.
"They cut off my ankle monitor. And then, probably like an hour later, they called my wife and asked where I was, because my ankle monitor was cut off," recalled Gibson about his chaotic arrest.
"And my wife told them, 'How don't y'all know, y'all just picked him up. Like, y'all work for that same agency, how don't y'all know he was just picked up?"
The government must now pay more than $9,300 to cover Gibson's legal fees.
Bryan said attorneys have repeatedly proven that ICE did not have a valid warrant or obtained one only after someone was already detained.
"These are people's lives, and that is the reason why I keep fighting, because nobody seems to understand that these are people’s lives. It is not about winning or losing or the government right or wrong, it's that this is actually somebody's entire life that we are dealing with," explained Bryan.
Dig deeper:
In another case, U.S. District Court Judge Donovan Frank ordered more than $4,000 in legal fees after finding the government acted in "direct opposition to their own guidance and in disregard of clear case law" in attempting to justify the arrest of a Venezuelan refugee with no criminal record.
"That is unreasonable governmental conduct," Frank wrote.
What they're saying:
In a statement to the FOX 9 Investigators, the Department of Homeland Security argued the only "unreasonable" conduct is that open border and sanctuary politicians "allow criminal illegal aliens to be loose in our neighborhoods."
"No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better," a DHS spokesperson said.
DHS did not comment on the attorneys fees it must now pay for wrongfully detaining immigrants.
"It is a message. It is a message that the Federal District Courts are sending to ICE," Bryan said. "Do the right thing. Follow procedure, follow due process. We are not saying you can't detain people. You just have to follow the Constitution."