Yale Professor Michael Wishnie Filing Suppression Motions In CT Immigration Court

According to newspaper articles, Professor Michael Wishnie and Yale Law student Simon Moshenberg have convinced Immigration Judge Michael Straus to allow them (and perhaps other defense attorneys) to file suppression motions and motions to dismiss cases on Constitutional grounds.

According to the reporters, the motions will probably be based on how Jose Llivisupa and ten other construction workers were picked up in September 2006 by local police in Danbury, CT based on racial profiling and the local police then turned the workers over to ICE officials who help them for weeks without allowing them any outside contact to obtain legal representation. Strategies for the suppression motion include that the local police arrests were illegal because the local police had no contract with ICE to act as immigration officials, the men were racially profiled, the arresting ICE officer violated regulations by also examining the them, and ICE violated the men's right to obtain legal representation.

ICE counsel Leigh Mapplebeck apparently argued that suppression is only required if the police or ICE engaged in egregious conduct. It seems that ICE counsel is relying on a simplistic and outmoded interpretation of the Supreme Court's ruling in Lopez-Mendoza, which left open the possibility of suppressing evidence for all Fourth Amendment violations if there were proof of widespread violations of Fourth Amendment rights -- something that may well be proven in today's post-2001 world. Lopez-Mendoza relied on how INS behaved in 1984, which was vastly different than today. News stories include Mary E. O'Leary's article "Demonstrators back Ecuadoreans nabbed in federal raids," on April 3, 2007 in the New Haven Register.