ICE: Detroit Judge’s Hold On Iraqi Deportations Ignores Safety Threat

DETROIT, MI — Federal immigration officials are blasting a federal judge’s decision earlier this week that indefinitely delays the deportation of 1,400 Iraqi nationals. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith’s Monday injunction gives the mostly Christian Iraqis time to persuade immigration courts they would be tortured or killed if they’re kicked out of the United States.

Goldsmith’s order came hours before an earlier ruling staying deportation was set to expire. The judge first suspended deportations in June, and the new order grants another reprieve to about 230 Iraqi nationals already in custody and another 1,200 who are likely to be arrested, the Associated Press reported.

Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration, Customs and Enforcement in Detroit, said Wednesday that Goldsmith has once again “failed to acknowledge the generous procedures and safeguards afforded to aliens in the immigration removal process, under which all of these aliens were lawfully ordered removed from the United States." (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, and click here to find your local Michigan Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Like Detroit Patch on Facebook; story continues below.

“It’s even more concerning that the court’s decision overlooks the clear public safety threat posed by these aliens — the vast majority of whom are convicted criminals,” Walls said in a statement. “The criminal history of these aliens includes convictions for homicide, rape, aggravated assault, drug trafficking, sex assault and many other types of offenses.”

In his written, 34-page opinion Monday, Goldsmith said the government ignores the “grisly fate petitioners face if deported to Iraq,” including the risk of torture “on the basis of residence in America and publicized criminal records.”

“Many will also face persecution as a result of a particular religious affiliation,” Goldsmith wrote.

In a court filing last week, William Silvis of the Justice Department said the deportees would not be sent to ISIS-controlled territories.

About 1,400 Iraqi nationals, including about 140 in Metro Detroit, were arrested without warning after discovering their removal orders, which had lain dormant for years, were to be enforced under an agreement between the United States and Iraq.

“This abrupt change triggered a feverish search for legal assistance to assert rights against the removal of persons confronting the grisly fate petitioners face if deported to Iraq,” Goldsmith wrote. “That legal effort has, in turn, been significantly impeded by the government’s successive transfers of many detainees across the country, separating them from their lawyers and the families and communities who can assist in those legal efforts.”

Goldsmith, whose jurisdiction over the case has been challenged, said the federal district court is “a first responder to protect the writ of habeas corpus and the allied right to due process, by allowing an orderly filing for relief with the immigration courts before deportation, thereby assuring that those who might be subjected to grave harm and possible death are not cast out of this country before having their day in court.”

Photo via Shutterstock