ACLU Commends Mayor for New Guidelines on D.C. Government and Immigrants: Treat Everyone Alike and Leave Immigration Enforcement to the Federal Government

Johnny Barnes, Executive Director of the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital, said today, “We’re pleased D.C. remains uninvolved in the Secure Communities program of the federal immigration agency.  The Mayor’s order issued Wednesday makes clear that law enforcement here will treat all residents equally.  Anything else fatally endangers the District government’s relationship with immigrant communities.”

ACLU joined with others in testifying last year against involvement in the program.  Dramatic accounts by immigrant women, especially, showed the Council the high cost when police are required, by programs such as Secure Communities, to approach immigrants with suspicion.  The witnesses said they were simply unlikely to report crimes.

Barnes added, “It’s clear immigration enforcement should remain a federal responsibility.  The ACLU affiliates around the nation have challenged efforts to deputize local officers, and to pass local versions of immigration laws as Arizona and others have done; both are ill advised.  D.C. has taken the right path: with the Council’s leadership several years ago, reaffirmed now by the Mayor.”

D.C. Police Agree To Allow Religious Head Scarves In Police Lock-Ups

The Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has agreed to a new policy that will for the first time respect the First Amendment right to wear religious head scarves in police holding facilities such as district stations and the central cellblock.

ACLU Learns Few Details in First Agency Response on D.C. Police Phone Tracking

As part of a massive coordinated nationwide information-seeking campaign, on August 3 the American Civil Liberties Union of the Nation’s Capital sent a request for records to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), as did 33 other ACLU affiliates across the nation that filed a total of 379 reqeusts.  The requests, to MPD and hundreds of local law enforcement agencies large and small, demand to know when, why and how police are using cell phone location data to track Americans. The campaign is one of the largest coordinated information act requests in American history. In its response, the MPD released no substantial records and the ACLU plans to appeal.

GPS tracking case goes to Supreme Court

UPDATE: The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in this case on November 8, 2011.

On October 3, the ACLU-NCA, together with the National ACLU, filed its amicus brief in the Supreme Court in this important case, which asks whether the Fourth Amendment's protection of personal privacy will stand in the face of technological advances that can enable the government to learn almost anything about anyone.

Without a warrant, the FBI and DC police attached a GPS transmitter to Mr. Jones' car, turning his vehicle into a surveillance device that informed the police, every 10 seconds for 28 days, exactly where the car was. The government says that was OK, because when a person travels on public streets and roads any bystander can see his car. But no bystander can see a car everywhere it goes for 28 days.

Our brief draws an analogy to the landmark case of Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), in whch the Supreme Court rejected the government's argument that no search warrant was needed to attach a listening device to the outside of a telephone booth to eavesdrop on the conversation inside, because the outside of the phone booth was not a private place. The Court ruled that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public . . . is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. . . . But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.” Here Mr. Jones did not knowingly expose every detail of his travels for a month to the public. Like the content of Mr. Katz's telephone calls, the route of his travels should be constitutionally protected.