Maryland Immigration Court Grants Motion To Suppress

Congratulations to Maureen A. Sweeney along with her students Adam Crandall, Rama Taib, and Fariha Quasem at University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore for winning a suppression motion in Immigration Court before Immigration Judge Phillip T. Williams in Baltimore!

On August 5, 2010, Judge Williams granted the suppression motions and terminated one of the cases based on inappropriate sexual contact by an ICE agent. The inappropriate sexual contact rendered the ICE agents' Fourth Amendment violations to be egregious and Judge Williams suppressed the evidence.

Inappropriate touching by a male ICE agent while acting in his official capacity while a woman was in her bedroom in her bed clothing is offensive and shocking to the conscience of any reasonable person.

It is terrible that the woman had to suffer the grossly illegal actions of the ICE agent and it is no surprise that Judge Williams suppressed the evidence and terminated the case. Another person in the same case won the suppression motion but lost the case (unless it's overturned on appeal) based on details that came out during the hearing.

Congratulations to Maureen Sweeney, her team of students, and everyone else who worked on the case! It's another example of suppressing evidence in immigration court. Considering the repulsive illegal conduct by ICE agents in various cases, it may only be a matter of time before courts suppress evidence for all Fourth Amendment violations once courts conclude that the violations are widespread.