Casas-Castrillon v. Lockyer is one of several cases in which the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has signed on as amicus curiae to support non-citizens seeking relief from immigration detention. It involves a challenge to the detention of non-citizens as they pursue relief from deportation. CCR along with other human rights organizations that advocate on behalf of immigrant and non-citizen communities filed an amicus brief that argues prolonged immigrant detention degrades constitutional due process protections by requiring people to surrender their rights in exchange for judicial review.

The brief centers on the individual stories that demonstrate the breadth, severity, and frequency with which non-citizens are subjected to prolonged pre-removal detention in order to challenge their removal.

As the brief states, “The judiciary serves a vital role as a check against excess in all areas of our government’s administration, including the DHS’s detention authority. As the agency flagrantly violates the constitutional limits on detention that have been imposed and upheld by the Supreme Court, our clients continue to lose years of their lives to a detention system that robs them of hope that is rightfully theirs.”

CCR filed the amicus along with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Asian Law Caucus, among others.

The case is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.