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A coalition of nineteen human rights and immigrants’ rights organizations filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement, requesting a federal court in Los Angeles to order the administration to release records dealing with the government’s reasons for not releasing detained immigrant families together.
On August 4, 2020, the coalition submitted a FOIA request to the Trump Administration seeking access to records regarding family detentions and the Trump administration’s failure to release children, but no records were released. The requesting organizations are opposed to the lengthy detention of migrant family units who are neither a flight risk nor danger. The Trump administration opposed and sought to terminate a 1997 settlement reached in a still pending federal court case in Los Angeles named
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Amnesty International USA is launching the Mustafa Kassem Fellowship named after the detained U.S. citizen who died in an Egyptian prison one year ago. Today would have been his 56th birthday.
Mustafa Kassem, an Egyptian-American from Long Island, New York, was detained in August 2013 while visiting family in Cairo. Like countless others in Egypt, he was beaten by security forces and jailed for being a bystander during the violent dispersal of a sit-in protesting the Egyptian government.
Kassem was tried alongside hundreds of co-defendants and charged with protesting the government in a sham mass trial. During the trial sessions, prosecutors failed to submit evidence establishing the individual responsibility of each of the 739 defendants, nor did the court insist on the need to establish such responsibility, rendering this a grossly unfair trial.
âI donât even know how to feel,â Kouadio told the Guardian from her home in Ivory Coast. âIâve stopped working because I thought I was moving in January.â
Biden has taken a slew of actions to roll back or review Trumpâs anti-immigrant policies, but activists say Biden must do more to prove his commitment to meaningful change.
Anxiety is building around certain policies, such as proclamations 10014 and 10052, the ban on immigrant and non-immigrant visa holders which is keeping Kouadio and her family out of the US.
Attorney Jesse Bless, who is involved with litigation against the bans, estimated it would take about 10 minutes for Biden to revoke them. âIf President Biden lets these visa bans go until they sunset on March 31, he will have effectively terminated the opportunity for diversity visa holders forever,â Bless said.
Dear President Biden,
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 220 national organizations to promote and protect civil and human rights in the United States, and the 82 undersigned organizations, we write to urge you to act on your promise of ensuring equality, equity, and justice in our criminal legal system by immediately commuting the sentences of all individuals under federal sentence of death, and reinstating the federal moratorium on the use of the death penalty. Any criminal legal system truly dedicated to the pursuit of justice should recognize the humanity of all those who come into contact with it, not sanction the use of a discriminatory practice that denies individuals their rights, fails to respect their dignity, and stands in stark contrast to the fundamental values of our democratic system of governance. If we are to truly forge a nation as good as its ideals, the federal government mu