Latest news with #Sharma-Crawford
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
ACLU accuses Leavenworth facility of breaking the law, violating ICE detainees' rights
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is claiming that a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, is breaking the law and violating the rights of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees. Lawrence police searching for person accused of stabbing elderly woman The ACLU said immigrants being detained at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Leavenworth are currently facing a number of problematic and unlawful conditions, including: Lengthy lockdowns Deprivation of basic needs Crowded and unsanitary conditions Use of force Delays in medical care Lack of language access Lack of telephone access and confidential communications with legal counsel Issues with legal mail Lack of services According to both detainee and attorney reports, the ACLU said a significant number of people detained at FCI Leavenworth continue to be held in ICE's custody even though they have already won their immigration cases. from immigration advocates urged officials to rectify concerns regarding conditions in the facility and the prolonged detention of immigrant detainees. The letter was written by Advocates for Immigrants Rights and Reconciliation, the ACLU, the ACLU of Kansas, the National Immigrant Justice Center, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the Missouri/Kansas Chapter of AILA and the Office of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. You can read the full letter here. ICE entered into an agreement with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in February to house immigrant detainees. The ACLU said people in ICE custody face more restrictive conditions than those in BOP custody, with less out-of-cell time and no access to outdoor recreation. Language barriers also create significant hurdles for detainees in need of medical care, the ACLU said. Michael Sharma-Crawford, a local immigration attorney and the current chair of the Kansas and Missouri chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said it's a violation of the Sixth Amendment to deny detainees access to a lawyer. 'Detaining someone and undermining their due process by blocking access to counsel is a clear and unequivocal violation of the Sixth Amendment,' Sharma-Crawford said. 'That injustice becomes even more severe when it targets civil detainees—people who are not accused of any crime. The harm in these cases is not just amplified; it is indefensible.' Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project, said FCI Leavenworth is breaking the law. 'The Trump administration's use of federal prisons to detain immigrants must end. Holding people in extended lockdown, and denying them access to adequate medical care, legal counsel, and even sunlight isn't just inhumane – it's illegal,' Cho said. 'The taxpayer-funded conditions faced by immigrants held at FCI Leavenworth should concern us all.' Karla Juarez, executive director of Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation, said she's horrified by what's going on at the facility. 'What's happening at FCI Leavenworth is not only a violation of ICE's own policies—it's a violation of our shared humanity,' Juarez said. 'These are people who have already won their immigration cases and who should be free with their families, not locked in overcrowded cells without access to medical care or even sunlight. 'We are horrified. We demand that ICE and BOP stop treating immigrant lives as disposable and immediately release those who have already been granted protection.' An individual who was detained at FCI Leavenworth earlier this year shared his experience with the ACLU. 'The hardest thing I can express was that when we arrived, we were the second group, and it was an abandoned area,' the former detainee shared. 'Everything was very dirty. We didn't have any cleaning supplies. Food was the hardest part because it wasn't a pleasant meal. There was no way to wash clothes. We only had one uniform, and that was it. Honestly, the time we were locked up in the cell was the worst. We had no communication with our families, and they didn't comply with the necessary resources.' He said he hopes ICE makes the necessary changes. 'I hope they get out as soon as possible,' he continued. 'There are many people who are there who have already won a case and are still there. I hope ICE pays more attention to their cases because they never get answers for them. I hope they are truly giving them enough food and they can communicate with their families and lawyers.' Earlier this month, the Kansas Federal Public Defender's office sent a letter to the FCI Leavenworth warden and the assistant general counsel at the BOP due to health concerns for residents – prompted by a monthslong rat infestation at the FCI facility. The letter also noted issues with video visitation of connectivity and timeliness interfering with reliable and confidential visitation for attorneys with clients. A responsive letter from the warden noted pest control measures taken and stated that attorney-client visits are unmonitored and confidential. The FCI Leavenworth facility is run by the BOP. This is not the CoreCivic facility that the city has been battling in court. FOX4 has been in contact with FCI Leavenworth and is awaiting their response. Check back in for the latest updates on this story. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
KC protesters decry ICE targeting undocumented immigrants who appear in court
Holding signs such as 'No ICE in Court,' and 'Protect Due Process,' some 50 to 60 protesters gathered in Kansas City Tuesday afternoon to protest a legal tactic — but one that they insist is inherently deceptive — being used by Department of Homeland Security attorneys to deport immigrants who show up for scheduled court hearings. 'ICE was actually arresting people inside the courts last week — across the country and also here in Kansas City,' said Karla Jaurez, the executive director in Kansas City Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation (AIRR). 'We want to be watching and letting the community know that that is happening.' The protest against the DHS and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was held in Washington Square Park across from where Kansas City Immigration Court is held, on the fifth floor of 2345 Grand Blvd.. Kansas City immigration attorney Michael Sharma-Crawford explained that if an individual who is undocumented enters the United States and is arrested by ICE within two years, DHS attorneys holds that the law allows them to dismiss that individual's case and have the individual deported by ICE without a hearing — a process known as expedited removal. 'What happens is, and what the concern is,' Sharma-Crawford said, 'is you have a pro se litigant (individual representing themselves) who is sitting in court. The government's attorney makes an oral motion to dismiss. And the litigant probably doesn't know what the hell is going on. 'Dismiss? Sounds good.' The judge then goes, 'OK, I'm going to grant it.' 'And as soon as they do, the person is no longer in removal proceedings.' In other words, their day in court is over. 'They walk about the door and ICE arrests them,' Sharma-Crawford said. He said an unknown number of individuals ,but at least two, were arrested outside Kansas City's Immigration Court, and put in custody, last week. On Tuesday morning, immigrant advocates showed up in the lobby of the immigration court building to pass out flyers offering advice to those appearing in court, except the court's master docket that day had been canceled. The advice is printed on the flyers in both English and Spanish: 'If you do not have a lawyer and DHS tries to dismiss your case at your hearing, this may not be a good thing and attorneys strongly advice preserving your rights by doing the following:' The list included: Ask the court to order DHS to put the motion in writing and give you 10 days to respond after they file the motion. ▪ If the court does not order DHS to make the motion in writing, ask the court to give you at least 10 days to respond to the motion so you can consult an attorney. ▪ If the judge denies all these things and misses the case, tell the judge you want to reserve appeal. Outside the court on Tuesday afternoon, Aracely Mendoza, originally from Mexico, but now a U.S. citizen living in Kansas City, held a cardboard sign. 'Stop Illegal Deportations.' 'I'm here to protest against ICE being in court. I'm here to support my people,' she said. 'I've seen a lot of people affected. People come here to make a better future for themselves. They come here, they get deported. They get divided. Families are being separated. That's not right.' The Department of Homeland Security, however, argues it is right. In January, then-Acting Secretary Benjamine Huffman, distributed a memo that 'designated for expedited removal the following categories of aliens not currently designated.' It included: ▪ Aliens who did not arrive by sea, who are apprehended anywhere in the United States more than 100 air miles from a U.S. international land border, and who have been continuously present in the United States for less than two years. ▪ (A)liens who did not arrive by sea, who are apprehended within 100 air miles from a U.S. international land border, and who have been continuously present in the United States for at least 14 days but for less than two years. 'Yes, it's immigration court,' Jaurez said, 'but this was not a common practice for the case to be dismissed and for ICE officials to be taking families, taking people right then and there. We're preventing due process violations. Everybody deserves their day in court.'
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kansas City immigration lawyer fighting against Trump blocking immigrants from access to college
Rekha Sharma-Crawford, an immigration attorney based in Kansas City who filed a federal lawsuit against the termination of international students' statuses, appears on the Kansas Reflector podcast on May 5. (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector) KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Immigration attorney Rekha Sharma-Crawford filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump's attempts to block five international students from their college educations — and so far, she's winning. Court records show that on April 24, a judge granted Sharma-Crawford's motion for a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration revocation of their legal status as students . On May Wednesday, the judge extended the order to May 21. Since Trump took office in January, Sharma-Crawford said, she's seen an 'unheard of' number of international students seek her counsel over having their immigration status terminated. When the federal government notified the students, Sharma-Crawford said, they were told they had been 'identified in criminal records' – with no elaboration. Sharma-Crawford said on the Kansas Reflector podcast that students lost their status without explanation or communication. She said it was done to ultimately harm international students and the universities. 'Here you have somebody who is acting in a completely opaque manner with no transparency impacting people's schooling, and their liberty and their rights even to go to school without any kind of proper notice, without any kind of proper hearing,' Sharma-Crawford said. The plaintiffs — who attend Truman State University, Northwest Missouri State University or Southeast Missouri State University or have extended status to continue post-graduation work — in Sharma-Crawford's lawsuit received notification in April that their Student and Exchange Visitor Program status had been revoked. In the lawsuit, Sharma-Crawford outlined some reasons the students believe their statuses were revoked for operating a vehicle without a valid driver's license, a noise complaint, a discontinued felony theft charge, a fleeing charge, an arrest for public intoxication, and traffic violations. The lawsuit said the students paid all associated fines and had no reason to believe their status would be terminated. None of the potential criminal records, according to Sharma-Crawford, was enough to terminate their visas. Yanky Perelmuter, an immigration attorney based in Overland Park, said he's seen the same. 'Almost all of the students I've talked to have some underlying petty criminal issue, like speeding tickets, or shoplifting, maybe a DUI,' Perelmuter said. The Kansas conference of the American Association of University Professors recently condemned the Trump administration's targeting of college and university international students and scholars. The group asked higher education administrators to stop cooperating with federal investigators by giving them students' personal information. The way students found out about their change in immigration status also was problematic, Sharma-Crawford said communication was an issue. 'Students weren't even getting notifications. Their schools were getting notifications,' Sharma-Crawford said. That robs students of due process, she said. But, she said, the universities communicated with the students immediately and connected them with legal resources. She said the most important resources universities can provide are for mental health. 'It is critical that they not only have the legal backing but they have the stamina mentally,' Sharma-Crawford said. Kansas Reflector reached out to every state university — the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, Emporia State University, Wichita State University and Fort Hays State University — as well as Washburn University, and asked how many international students had their status terminated and what support was provided. Most of the universities did not respond, but Fort Hays and Pittsburg State said they're monitoring the issue and are connecting students with resources. Sharma-Crawford said she wasn't surprised that most of the universities didn't respond. She said the Trump administration uses fear and intimidation as a tactic to scare universities and international students. 'It's hindering them from wanting to be here or come here,' Sharma-Crawford said. 'I think, in some ways, that's the plan. Because if you can economically harm the universities, then the universities will bend to your will.' Sharma-Crawford said one of the cruelest parts of this is the timing. The students were notified of termination roughly one month before finals. She said the stress of it caused some students to immediately leave the country without seeking legal help. Sharma-Crawford encouraged any affected student to seek individualized legal help.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Man deported after visiting family grave in Mexico is back in Kansas City
Evenezer Cortez Martinez is back on U.S. soil, landing in Kansas City Tuesday afternoon after being deported. The DACA recipient and Kansas father of three feared that he wouldn't be able to return from Mexico, a country he left at the age of 4. His Roeland Park family embraced in a tearful and joyful reunion at Kansas City International airport. U.S. Customs and Border Protection had stopped Cortez Martinez at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport more than two weeks ago, after he took a short trip to Mexico to visit his grandfather's grave. He was trying to return to Kansas City. Instead, he was detained and questioned, then put back on a plane to Mexico City on March 23. Cortez Martinez is a recipient of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. He had never been back to his birth nation, having been brought to the U.S. by his parents as a toddler. His farmworker father tended grapevines in California. Prior to his scheduled trip to Mexico, Cortez Martinez had applied for and received permission to travel and return to the U.S., a process called 'advance parole.' Kansas City-area man deported after visiting grandfather's grave in Mexico His case is an example of an immigrant who 'did everything the right way' and still ran into problems, said Rekha Sharma-Crawford, the Kansas City-based immigration attorney who filed a lawsuit April 2 on behalf of Cortez Martinez with the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas. The case, first reported by The Beacon, drew national attention. 'The lawsuit has been dismissed because you are home and that was really the point of the lawsuit,' Sharma-Crawford told her client at the airport. The government had asked for time to respond, indicating that the issue could be resolved without the judge hearing the case, said Sharma-Crawford. There seemed to be some confusion at the time when he was detained in Dallas, Cortez Martinez recalled, because a supervisor had been called over. Still, Cortez Martinez said he was told that he'd been ordered removed in absentia on June 11, 2024, and that his documents allowing him to travel had been issued in error. Cortez Martinez said he was never made aware of that order. 'I never got any notice,' he said. 'I check everything because there is all of the paper that we get for DACA renewal.' His current DACA is valid until October 2026. Cortez Martinez will now have an opportunity to resolve the re-calendaring of removal proceedings in Kansas City's immigration court, said Sharma-Crawford. 'I trust you,' Cortez Martinez said to Sharma-Crawford. 'Let's talk as soon as possible.' His children carried a poster they'd made, each signing a note to their father. They also brought mylar 'Happy Birthday' balloons. Cortez Martinez turned 40 while he was gone. Several other family members also had recent birthdays. Laughing, Cortez Martinez hugged his wife and declared, 'We'll have one single party.' This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
CBS News
04-04-2025
- CBS News
DACA recipient and Kansas City father of 3 deported to Mexico despite valid documentation
A 39-year-old DACA recipient and married father of three from Kansas City, Kansas, was deported last month after he left the U.S. and traveled to Mexico to visit his grandfather's grave, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday. Evenezer Cortez-Martinez was detained March 23 at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport as he was making his way back into the U.S., the lawsuit states. Martinez traveled to Mexico to visit his grandfather's grave on March 20. Upon arriving at DFW, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped him from boarding his connecting flight home to Kansas City, claiming he had a removal order filed in June 2024, the lawsuit says. Cortez-Martinez was deported immediately to Mexico City. According to Cortez-Martinez's lawyer, Rekha Sharma-Crawford, her client was unaware of a removal order filed in 2024 given he has been a DACA recipient since 2014 and had successfully renewed his permit every two years. Cortez-Martinez was brought to the U.S. as a four-year old child. Sharma-Crawford told CBS News her client applied for and obtained permission to travel outside of the U.S. through the Advance Parole process. This allows DACA recipients in the U.S. to temporarily travel outside of the country and return without a visa. CBS News has reached out to DHS and CBP for comment on the case. Sharma-Crawford is part of the legal team that filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Wednesday on behalf of Cortez-Martinez, suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and CBP. The lawsuit argues Cortez-Martinez cannot be barred without a formal removal hearing before an immigration judge given his DACA status and valid Advance Parole documents. According to court documents, the CBP officer denied Cortez-Martinez's entry as he was "ordered removed in absentia" on June 11, 2024, and the advance parole document "was issued in error." Sharma-His removal told CBS News in a statement Friday that his removal was "extremely out of the norm." "Regulations don't permit for someone who is on Advance Parole to be subjected to expedited processing, but in terms of how advance parole works, even if someone has a removal order, that doesn't prevent them from traveling out of the country and returning," Sharma-Crawford said. "That's the piece that is so jarring." Sharma-Crawford is urging other dreamers not to travel outside of the U.S. under the Trump administration. "If you don't have to travel right now, you should probably not travel. It's just too uncertain, it's just too unknown." Cortez-Martinez is currently staying with an uncle in Mexico City while his wife and three children remain in Kansas City. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy was established in 2012 under the Obama administration to protect unauthorized immigrants brought into the U.S. as children. As of September 2024, there were about 538,000 immigrants, known as dreamers, enrolled in DACA. In January, a federal appeals court declared DACA unlawful , but kept the policy in place.
