Immigrant Rights

A routine bus trip home to his family became a nightmare for a man whom U.S. Border Patrol agents unlawfully detained for hours

The ACLU of Washington and ACLU affiliates in California and eight other states sent a letter to Greyhound Lines Inc. to urge the company to change its policies and refuse U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) permission to conduct raids on buses without warrants.

The ACLU of Washington and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project are notifying law enforcement agencies in Washington about the settlement of a lawsuit in which the City of Spokane agreed to pay damages and attorneys’ fees to a man it unlawfully detained and held for immigration authorities after he was the victim of a car accident.

Refugee Joseph Doe, plaintiff in an ACLU of Washington suit challenging the Trump administration’s Muslim Ban, was finally able to hug his wife and three children last night, ending four years of painful separation.  The family was reunited at SeaTac airport after a federal court in December granted a nationwide injunction against a ban that would have indefinitely prevented children and spouses from any country from joining refugees like Doe, who have already been admitted to the U.S.

On January 9, 2018, Gabriel Gomez and the City of Spokane reached a final settlement in a lawsuit Mr. Gomez filed last August over a police officer having unlawfully detained him after he was the victim of a car accident.

In another rejection of the Trump Administration, the U.S. District Court in Seattle today denied a government motion to stay a nationwide Preliminary Injunction the Court issued on Dec. 24, 2017, against an administration policy that indefinitely barred certain refugees from entering the U.S. Previously, on January 5, the Court rejected a government motion to reconsider the Preliminary Injunction.

The U.S. District Court in Seattle granted a nationwide injunction in response to the ACLU of Washington's motion for a Preliminary Injunction on behalf of a refugee living in Washington state who wants to be reunited with his wife and children.