U.S. District Court Judge Marcia G. Cooke has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release 1,200 illegal aliens held in the Miami metropolitan area, after far-left activists sued.
The Daily Mail reports that both non-violent criminals and violent criminals with underlying medical conditions are eligible for release on parole with phone check-ins.
Cooke, who serves on the District Court for the Southern District of Florida, accused ICE of not providing for adequate “social distancing” of the criminal migrants.
“There is record evidence demonstrating that ICE has failed in its duty to protect the safety and general well-being of the petitioners,” her ruling said. “Social distancing at Krome is not only practically impossible, the conditions are becoming worse every day. Further, ICE has failed to provide detainees in some detention centers with masks, soap and other cleaning supplies, and failed to ensure that all detainees housed at the three detention centers can practice social distancing.”
The three detention centers affected by the order are Miami’s Krome Service Processing Center, Moore Haven’s Glades County Detention Center, and Pompano Beach’s Broward Transitional Center.
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Four left-wing organizations were behind the lawsuit – the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Rapid Defense Network, the Miami Law Immigration Clinic, and Americans for Immigrant Justice.
“Great news in FL. It is unethical to hold immigrants in these centers during the pandemic! Congrats [to] Americans for Immigrant Justice & all those advocates in this fight,” wrote Freedom Network USA, another pro-illegal immigration organization, in response to the ruling.
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America First conservatives were infuriated by the judgement, with columnist and lawyer Daniel Horowitz describing it as an “illegal ruling”. He called on the President to take action to force the expulsion of the criminal aliens in an op-ed for Conservative Review:
“All things equal, the law provides these illegal aliens with an immigration court process. But that requires detention, and if a judge is going to subvert detention, then Trump has every right to remove them from the country.
The Supreme Court has said for 130 years, in what is considered one of the most uninterrupted chains of case law, that illegal aliens who have not been affirmatively and consensually admitted to this country are as if they are standing physically outside our country. Clarence Thomas has suggested that perhaps the president has inherent authority to deport even a legal immigrant who is here under statute. But Trump certainly can apply that to an illegal alien who is considered as if he’s standing outside our country.”