Homeland Security sued over immigrant detention

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Chicago Tribune:

Reporting from Washington— A Chicago group has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the Department of Homeland Security, charging that its practice of asking local police to detain immigrants when there's no evidence of illegal activity is unconstitutional.

At issue is the use of an immigration detainer, a key component of Homeland Security's Secure Communities program. It is a request from the department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement to another law enforcement agency to hold people so that ICE can investigate their immigration status and potentially take over custody.

"What the lawsuit alleges is that in the vast majority of cases with individuals who have detainers lodged against them, basically ICE says to the locals, 'We are instructing you to detain [an individual] after [your] authority has expired because we have initiated an investigation,'" said Mark Fleming, litigation coordinator for the National Immigrant Justice Center, the group that filed the lawsuit.

The lawsuit contends that people are being held without probable cause, violating the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.