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Calif. courts asked to free mentally disabled
Civil rights groups on Friday asked the federal courts to free two mentally disabled men who have been held in immigration detention for up to five years after they were ruled incompetent to face deportation proceedings.
Petitions filed in Los Angeles and San Diego contend the men should be immediately freed or at least granted hearings to determine if they should be detained.
Both men, Mexican citizens with criminal records, were kept in legal limbo after they were deemed incompetent for deportation proceedings, according to a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
"These men were completely forgotten in the immigration prison system, their cases neglected for years. In other words, they were punished for having a mental disability," said Ahilan Arulanantham, the group's director of immigrant rights and national security. "Nobody tracked their cases, or even knew why they were detained."
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on the petitions, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said.
She said it was unclear how many of the approximately 30,000 federal immigration detainees nationwide have mental health issues because ICE doesn't specifically track that. However, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced a series of proposed reforms last year that included devising a medical classification system for detainees with "unique medical or mental health needs."
Both men mentioned in the petitions have been held in detention centers since 2005. One has severe mental disabilities and the other has been diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, the petitions state.
The civil rights groups contend the men were deprived of their constitutional right to due process and their rights under immigration and anti-discrimination laws. The petitions were filed by the ACLU chapter, Public Counsel in Los Angeles and the Casa Cornelia Law Center in San Diego.
The Los Angeles petition involves Jose Antonio Franco-Gonzalez, 29, a Mexican citizen who the ACLU says has severe mental disabilities. He doesn't know his age or birthday, has trouble counting and cannot tell time, according to the petition.
An immigration judge closed his deportation proceedings in 2005 and he still is detained. Another deportation hearing was finally set for January but that has been delayed, the petition said.
He would stay with family members in Costa Mesa if he is released pending the hearing, the petition said.
The other petition, filed in San Diego, involves Guillermo Gomez-Sanchez, 48, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
His immigration case was closed for 2 1/2 years because officials failed to give him a psychiatric evaluation and that left him in a "legal black hole," according to the petition.
In 2008, a judge ordered him released on a $5,000 bond, ruling that he was not a flight risk or a danger to the community. However, attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security have challenged the order and Gomez-Sanchez remains in detention until another hearing set for next month, according to the petition.
(2010-03-27 / The Associated Press)
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