New York City has agreed to pay up to $92.5 million to settle claims it unlawfully detained more than 20,000 undocumented immigrants beyond their scheduled release from city jails, some for weeks at a time, to allow federal immigration enforcement officers to take the immigrants into custody and put them into deportation proceedings.
The money will go to a class of immigrants detained by the Department of Correction between April 1, 1997 and Dec. 21, 2012, with amounts based on the length of their “overdetention,” under the settlement terms, granted preliminary approval Wednesday by State Supreme Court Justice Mitchell J. Danziger.
A claim by one detainee, held an additional 41 days after completion of a five-day sentence for unlicensed driving, will result in a payout of at least $25,000. Collectively, the immigrants were held more than 166,000 days beyond their scheduled release, said lawyers with Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP and Benno & Associates, representing the plaintiffs.
The settlement points up the constitutional pitfalls and challenges that can arise when local governments cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and detain immigrants in their custody. Mayor Eric Adams has said he wants to loosen so-called “sanctuary city” protections for immigrants and bolster cooperation with ICE ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge for “mass” deportation.
“The settlement says that everyone in this country has a right to due process,” Debra L. Greenberger, a partner with Emery Celli et al., said Thursday. “Everyone in this country has a right to be free when there’s not a court determination that they should be held in jail.”
In the settlement, the city admitted no wrongdoing. The Law Department said in a statement that the city – along with localities across the country – “operated with the assumption that compliance with ICE detainers was mandated under federal law.”
The statement added: “Court rulings eventually clarified that localities could not hold a detainee beyond their release date based solely on the contents of a federal detainer and that a court order is needed. New York City changed its policies in 2012 to conform with these court rulings.”
Under current law and practice, the city significantly limits cooperation with ICE to detainer requests accompanied by a judicial order and where the individual has been convicted of one of 177 crimes, or where the sought individual has been listed on a terrorism watch list. Backers of the “sanctuary” measures help maintain cooperation between the public and law enforcement.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said locating the class members would be a challenge. While some still reside in the United States, others are scattered across the globe – in countries including the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Ecuador, Cuba, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
“It’s going to be a challenging process to try to find people who deserve money from the settlement to get the word out,” Greenberger said.
Those who may be potential class members can visit NYCICEsettlement.com to file a claim, she said.
