Attorney holds town hall for neighbors near BioLab plant over class action suit against company
The plant, which stored chlorine chemicals, caught fire in September.
A huge plume of orange and black smoke filled the air and shut down Interstate 20, which runs beside the plant.
Firefighters ordered evacuations of thousands of people who live nearby. Shelter-in-place warnings were in effect for nearly a month.
Now, people who live and work around the plant are meeting with attorneys to discuss class action lawsuit options.
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'You really increase, exponentially, your bargaining power. Each person by themselves has a hard time going up against a big corporation. When you've got 10,000 of your best friends, all of a sudden joining together, you also are a big power to be dealt with,' attorney Alex Weatherby told Channel 2's Courtney Francisco.
He said some people could possibly claim property damages and damages to their health.
'With the injuries, the one that comes to mind to me the most would likely be property. So, if you have a home that was near there, there may be some damage to the physical property itself or to the resale value,' Weatherby said. 'You could also have some individual personal injuries if somebody was exposed to the fire.'
The town hall meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. in Lithonia.
Francisco will have an update from neighbors on WSB Tonight at 11 p.m.
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Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
ICE has a new courthouse tactic: Get immigrants' cases tossed, then arrest them outside
Federal agents detain an individual as he exits immigration court in New York City in July. Immigrants released at the border are being targeted for arrest when they show up for court hearings. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) Inside immigration courts around the country, immigrants who crossed the border illegally and were caught and released are required to appear before a judge for a preliminary hearing. But in a new twist, the Trump administration has begun using an unexpected legal tactic in its deportation efforts. Rather than pursue a deportation case, it is convincing judges to dismiss immigrants' cases — thus depriving the immigrants of protection from arrest and detention — then taking them into custody. The practice, affecting immigrants released at the border and given a 'notice to appear' in court under both the Trump and Biden administrations, sometimes leads to people being quickly deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement through a process called expedited removal. Many of the immigrants had requested asylum, as allowed under U.S. law. Late last month, advocates filed a lawsuit on behalf of a dozen immigrants unexpectedly arrested by ICE, often after having their cases dismissed. When an immigrant crosses the border illegally and is caught, they may be given a 'notice to appear,' or NTA, ordering them to appear before an immigration judge. It can sometimes take years, however, before their case comes up. One of the immigrants in the lawsuit was caught at the border with Mexico and given a court appearance ticket in 2022 after fleeing Cuba. His opposition to forced conscription and the communist government in Cuba led to his arrest there and he was raped in custody, according to the lawsuit. At his first hearing in U.S. immigration court in May, his case was dismissed with no reason given and his attorney agreed, thinking the relatively new maneuver was a positive development. But as he left the Miami court, the immigrant was arrested and sent to Washington state for detention, thousands of miles from his family and his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, according to the lawsuit. 'The aftermath of these courthouse arrests and dismissals for placement in expedited removal wreaks further havoc on people's lives,' according to a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice filed in July by a group of immigrant advocates. The group argued the practice is illegal and contrary to the traditional way people are treated when released at the border for court dates. The lawsuit includes 12 immigrants: three from Cuba, three from Venezuela, two from Ecuador, two from Guinea and others from Liberia and the Chechen Republic. A Department of Justice spokesperson, Natalie Baldassarre, said the department had no comment on the lawsuit. After a courthouse arrest in New York City in July, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CBS News that the new policy 'is reversing [President Joe] Biden's catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets.' However, the Trump administration has also released immigrants seeking asylum at the border pending court dates, according to a June 27 report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at the University of Syracuse, an organization that tracks federal statistics. Almost 18,000 people were released at the border in May 'even after Trump officials closed the border, vowed not to allow anyone in and to immediately detain anyone not legally in the country caught inside the U.S.,' the report stated. Other immigration attorneys who spoke with Stateline described uprooted lives caused by the new practice of arresting people after they show up for court hearings, but the attorneys declined to speak on the record for fear of drawing negative attention to their clients' cases. Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which represents more than 17,000 immigration attorneys and is not involved in the lawsuit, said the Department of Homeland Security is now arguing in court that anyone caught crossing the border should be arrested and detained, though it's not happening in every case. 'There is a large number of people going to court and getting arrested, and also people in detention not getting let out,' Dojaquez-Torres said. 'This happens to people with no criminal background, no negative immigration history — they might even have a sponsor that says, 'We will house them and feed them and make sure they show up to their court hearings.'' There are also cases of people arrested in court even if their case isn't dismissed, Dojaquez-Torres said. One of the immigrants in the lawsuit, a Venezuelan who said he faced persecution in his home country as a gay man with HIV, was arrested July 1 after a hearing in New York City even though his case is still active, according to the lawsuit. One woman born in Venezuela, who fears persecution because of her sexual orientation and opposition to the Venezuelan government, applied for asylum within a year of entering the United States in 2022, but was arrested at her first court hearing May 27. She now faces an expedited removal order, which could mean an immediate deportation if she loses appeals. She is currently in detention in Ohio, according to the lawsuit. Other cases mentioned in the lawsuit involved arrests at immigration courts in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nevada. Most of the immigrants mentioned in the lawsuit were caught crossing illegally. But two presented themselves at the border legally via an appointment set up through a phone app for asylum-seekers, CBP One, designed to limit the number of people who could cross the border asking for asylum. (The Trump administration shut down the app on its first day in office.) In one of those cases, a gay man from Ecuador, facing government threats over his LGBTQ+ advocacy efforts, used the app in January and appeared in court June 4, according to the lawsuit. The government moved to dismiss his case, and he was deported back to Ecuador within a month, despite asking for more time to file an asylum case, according to the suit. He is now living in hiding. The class-action lawsuit has not yet been answered by the government, though the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, James Boasberg, ruled July 18 that the immigrants suing could use pseudonyms without identifying information as long as they provide real names and addresses in documents sealed from public view. Courthouse arrests may cross a new line legally but they're not likely to increase deportation significantly the way current large-scale workplace raids and transfers from local jails might, said Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. The administration's goal of 1 million deportations a year still seems unlikely, he said. Arrests declined in July over the previous month, but deportations increased, according to an Aug. 2 TRAC report, with 56,945 people in detention. The number of detainees will increase with more federal funding for detention, but is still unlikely to reach the level needed to deport a million people in a year, Chishti said. The issue of courthouse arrests makes legal representation for immigrants all the more important, Chishti said. 'Even in these horrendous cases, if you have a lawyer, he'll know how to handle it and say, 'He can't be removed, he'll be subject to torture,'' Chishti said. 'The difference between arrest and deportation could be the presence of a lawyer.' Nevertheless, the prospect of arrest and detention during a case that may last years could make immigrants hesitant to show up for court dates, which in turn could make them subject to immediate deportation. 'If you don't show up for a court date, they will enter what's called an in absentia removal order. If you come into any contact with ICE after that, you will be most likely detained and removed,' Dojaquez-Torres said.
NBC News
4 hours ago
- NBC News
ICE is leaning hard on recruitment, but immigration experts say that could come at a price
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pushing the message that it wants 'patriotic Americans' to join its ranks — and that new perks come with signing up. The agency enforcing President Donald Trump's plans for mass deportations is promising new recruits maximum $50,000 signing bonuses over three years, up to $60,000 in federal student loan repayments and retirement benefits. ICE announced this week it is waiving age requirements and, on Wednesday, actor Dean Cain, who played Superman in 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,' announced on social media that he was joining the ranks of ICE as an honorary officer. 'I felt it was important to join with our first responders to help secure the safety of all Americans, not just talk about it, so I joined up,' Cain said. He encouraged others to join ICE as officers, touting the job's salary and benefits. The possibility of monetary benefits and the celebrity endorsement have experts concerned. They fear the recruitment push could endanger public safety if it takes local police away from their communities, removes important personnel from other critical missions or cuts corners in the rush to hire. Immigration and law enforcement experts also said the hiring push does not reflect the public safety threat posed by unauthorized immigrants, as recent data shows many people who have been arrested by ICE during the Trump administration do not have criminal histories. One in 5 people ICE apprehended in street arrests was a Latino with no criminal history or removal orders, according to an analysis of new ICE data by the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy think tank. 'We're moving further away from actually keeping people safe through this,' Jason Houser, who held senior Department of Homeland Security positions during the Obama and Biden administrations, told NBC News. DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment on concerns about recent recruitment efforts and whether they could come at the expense of other critical tasks. The administration has said it wants to add 10,000 ICE agents to carry out Trump's promise of mass deportations. That effort recently received an unprecedented influx of funding after the Republican-led Congress passed a bill that includes nearly $30 billion for ICE's deportation and enforcement operations, tripling the agency's budget. DHS recently launched an initiative called 'Defend the Homeland' with the goal of recruiting 'patriots to join ICE law enforcement' and meet Trump's goal of deporting 1 million immigrants per year. The department has since announced new incentives or waived previous requirements to fulfill its goal. 'Your country is calling you to serve at ICE. In the wake of the Biden administration's failed immigration policies, your country needs dedicated men and women of ICE to get the worst of the worst criminals out of our country,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement announcing the initiative. On Wednesday, DHS said it was ending age limits to join ICE 'so even more patriots will qualify to join ICE in its mission.' Previously, new applicants needed to be at least 21 years old to join. They had to be no older than 37 to be criminal investigators and 40 to be considered as deportation officers. Asked whether there would be any age limits, DHS referred NBC News to a social media clip of Noem saying recruits could sign up at 18. The department is also using its monetary incentives to try to lure recruits. The 'significant new funding' from Congress will fund perks like the signing bonuses, federal student loan repayments and options for enhanced overtime pay and retirement benefits. Houser raised concerns over the claim that more ICE officers would directly equate to better public safety. 'ICE now has this new gorge of money. But what is the public safety and national security threat? Is it the individuals ICE is now arresting? Many of them are not criminals; a lot of them have no removal orders,' he said. Almost half of the people in ICE custody have neither been convicted of nor charged with any crime, ICE data shows. In late June, internal data obtained by NBC News showed that after six months of aggressive immigration enforcement and promises to focus on deporting violent criminals, the Trump administration has arrested and detained only a small fraction of the undocumented immigrants already known to ICE as having been convicted of sexual assault and homicide. DHS did not immediately respond to questions about the arrests of those with criminal records compared with those without. 'Arresting people who are not public safety or national security threats because of the current atmosphere of limited resources just simply means that there are fewer resources for prioritizing people who pose bigger threats,' said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. In its push, DHS is recruiting not just those new to law enforcement. The agency has also faced some recent criticism for aggressively recruiting new agents from some of its most trusted local partners. Jonathan Thompson, the executive director and CEO of the National Sheriffs' Association, said in a previous interview that the recruitment efforts targeting local law enforcement were 'bad judgment that will cause an erosion of a relationship that has been improving of late.' 'It's going to take leadership at DHS to really take stock, because, hey, they need state and locals,' Thompson said. The administration is also shifting current personnel to help arrest undocumented immigrants — including more than 5,000 personnel from across federal law enforcement agencies and up to 21,000 National Guard troops, according to an operation plan described to NBC News by three sources with knowledge of the personnel allocations who detailed the previously unreported plans. The plan, which is already underway, calls for using 3,000 ICE agents, including 1,800 from Homeland Security Investigations, which generally investigates transnational crimes and is not typically involved in arresting noncriminal immigrants. In addition, it involves 2,000 Justice Department employees from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration and 500 employees from Customs and Border Protection. It also includes 250 IRS agents, some of whom may be used to provide information on the whereabouts of immigrants using tax information, while others would have the authority to make arrests, according to the operation plan. 'You have people, literally, whose job it is to go after fentanyl being forced to spend their time arresting grandmas on the streets of Los Angeles,' said Scott Shuchart, who was an ICE official in the Biden administration. 'That is a huge and bizarre public safety trade off.' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson previously said in a statement: 'Enforcing our immigration laws and removing illegal aliens is one big way President Trump is 'Making America Safe Again.' But the president can walk and chew gum at the same time. We're holding all criminals accountable, whether they're illegal aliens or American citizens. That's why nationwide murder rates have plummeted, fugitives from the FBI's most wanted list have been captured, and police officers are empowered to do their jobs, unlike under the Biden Administration's soft-on-crime regime.' The administration is also shifting some employees with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, during hurricane season, to assist ICE, DHS said in a statement Thursday. 'DHS is adopting an all-hands-on-deck strategy to recruit 10,000 new ICE agents. To support this effort, select FEMA employees will temporarily be detailed to ICE for 90 days to assist with hiring and vetting,' DHS said. 'Their deployment will NOT disrupt FEMA's critical operations. FEMA remains fully prepared for Hurricane Season.' DHS said on July 31 that it has issued over '1,000 tentative job offers since July 4, marking a significant milestone in its ongoing recruitment efforts.' Some of the offers were to several retired officers. The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment about its seeking to recruit local law enforcement or shifting other federal personnel to ICE. Houser said it will be important to see what kind of standards will be in place for new hires and whether they are being properly vetted and trained. Houser said that traditionally it has been difficult to recruit such hires. 'ICE officers take about 12 to 18 months to come online,' he said. Shuchart said the Trump administration is 'not irrational for wishing they could make things quicker. The question is, are they making things quicker in ways that make sense, or are they taking shortcuts that are dangerous?' He said that prioritizing increasing the number of deportation officers could be 'exacerbating the problems.' 'If you actually wanted the immigration system to work, you would be hiring thousands of immigration judges, you would be funding prosecutors, you would be funding defense lawyers,' he said. 'If what we wanted was a fair and fast system, it would be the complete opposite of this.'
CBS News
5 hours ago
- CBS News
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Chicago area Friday to discuss ICE arrests
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is in the Chicago area on Friday to discuss expanding detention spaces. Noem also plans to discuss their arrests of what she calls the "worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens." Noem's office will also talk about state partnerships with immigration and customs enforcement to expand detention facilities. Her visit comes just days after the Trump administration announced plans to build a new immigration detention center in Indiana, already nicknamed the "Speedway Slammer." Noem said Indiana would add 1,000 detention beds for immigrants facing deportation under a revived federal program. ICE deportations could ramp up significantly in the next six months, since the agency just received major funding through Trump's own "Big Beautiful Bill," including $45 billion to build more detention facilities and $30 billion to fund the deportation process. A recent CBS News poll shows that the president's deportation effort has lost the majority of support it once had, with a growing number of Americans expressing concern about immigration authorities not focusing on arresting and deporting dangerous criminals, from 53% in June to now 44%. Noem's visit to the Chicago area kicks off at 10 a.m.
