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Court Says 'No' to Indefinite Detention (3/17/2006)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org
Ninth Circuit Orders
Release of Sri Lankan Tamil Torture Victim Held
for Nearly Five
Years
LOS ANGELES - The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today unanimously
ordered the immediate release of a Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seeker and torture
victim who has been imprisoned by the government for nearly five
years.
Despite being granted asylum repeatedly by two immigration
courts, 25-year-old Ahilan Nadarajah, who was severely persecuted in Sri Lanka
before fleeing, has been held in a federal detention center in San Diego since
late 2001.
"This case is about a torture victim who fled to this
country seeking asylum and who was locked up for years even though he kept
winning his asylum case," said Ahilan Arulanantham, staff attorney for the
American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "The court's ruling
strongly confirms that the government cannot lock up people for years
indefinitely and without good reason."
The Ninth Circuit ruled
that Nadarajah's detention violated the law for three reasons: because of its
extreme length, because there is almost no chance that the government will ever
remove him to another country, and because the government's allegation that he
poses a danger is completely unfounded. Writing for the three-judge panel Judge
Sidney R. Thomas stated, "...we conclude that the general immigration detention
statutes do not authorize the attorney general to incarcerate detainees for an
indefinite period."
The court went on to say that, consistent with
Supreme Court precedent, arriving immigrants like Nadarajah who are in
immigration proceedings can be detained only "for a reasonable period and only
if there is a significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable
future."
"I'm so happy that this day has come and that the
government will release me. I knew in my heart all along that this day would
come, I just want to get on with the rest of my life," said Ahilan Nadarajah.
Nadarajah is a member of the Tamil ethnic minority in Sri Lanka
who lived with his family and worked on their farm from childhood until 2001. In
the mid-1990s, during years of civil unrest and turmoil, the Sri Lankan army
invaded his small town, forcing his family to flee from their home. As a
teenager, he was repeatedly kidnapped and tortured by the Sri Lankan Army solely
because of his minority status. The Army accused him of being a member of the
separatist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). At one point, the Army
strung him up by his ankles and poured gasoline on him. His attackers warned him
if they found him again, they would kill him.
In October 2001
Nadarajah fled Sri Lanka in fear for his life and headed to Canada, where he had
family members. En route, he crossed the Mexico-U.S. border and was immediately
apprehended and detained in San Diego, where he has remained.
"This
case is a sharp rebuke to the government's policy of detaining immigrants for
years and years while their immigration cases are pending, even when they don't
pose any danger or flight risk," said Arulanantham. "The government said he was
a national security risk and accused him of being affiliated with the LTTE, but
every court that examined the evidence found that there was no basis whatsoever
for this accusation."
Over the last four and a half years, as
Nadarajah's case wound through the courts, an immigration judge twice rejected
the government's allegations that he is a national security risk and granted him
relief under the Geneva Convention Against Torture. The Board of Immigration
Appeals also affirmed the decision.
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