Hundreds of immigrants with mental disabilities who were ordered deported after being forced to represent themselves in court may be able to return to the U.S. under terms of a settlement approved today in a Los Angeles class-action lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee granted final approval of the settlement in Franco v. Holder, clearing the way for the immigrants with serious mental disabilities to request to reopen their cases and, if approved, return to this country.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for due process,” said Hector Villagra, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
“For too long, individuals with mental disabilities were forced to represent themselves in deportation proceedings or allowed to languish in immigration jails,” he said. “Ultimately, all were denied a fair day in court. This settlement ensures that individuals who were ordered deported in violation of the law will finally have an opportunity to obtain the benefits of the court’s landmark ruling.”
The settlement follows an April 2013 injunction ordering that immigrants with serious mental disabilities have a right to legal representation if they are determined not competent to represent themselves.
A subsequent order issued last October required the federal government to establish comprehensive screening and competency determinations.
Those rulings left unresolved the cases of the hundreds of class members who had been ordered deported before the rulings went into effect. The new settlement applies to immigrants with mental disabilities who were detained in California, Arizona and Washington after Nov. 21, 2011, and were deported without legal representation and without a proper competency determination.
The federal government has agreed to assist the return of all individuals whose cases are reopened and to pay transportation costs for some of those immigrants to return to the U.S., according to the settlement terms.
The suit was filed in 2010 by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and others on behalf of Jose Antonio Franco-Gonzalez and Guillermo Gomez- Sanchez. The two immigrants with mental disabilities had been locked up for years in immigration jails after being determined to be mentally incompetent to represent themselves in their immigration proceedings.
After more than five years of litigation, and the reforms ordered by the court, an independent monitor was appointed to ensure that the federal government complies with the plan, according to the ACLU.
—City News Service