the lawsuit<\/a> against the Executive Office for Immigration Review on Wednesday in federal court.<\/p>\nFederal immigration officers began ramping up arrests at the John Moss Federal Building last May. Dozens of reports have surfaced about people being detained and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after attending seemingly routine immigration court hearings.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, citing reporting by The Sacramento Bee, contends authorities arrested at least 39 people after immigration court hearings in Sacramento. Last December, officers arrested Afghan immigrants at \u201croutine\u201d court hearings, according to advocates.<\/p>\n
Journalists blocked from court, suit says<\/p>\n
As the number of arrests rose in June, federal authorities blocked off access to journalists, attorneys and family members attempting to observe immigration court hearings.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit asserts Krell then sought records detailing the justification for closing the John Moss Federal Building to the public. The complaint states that Krell eventually received a \u201cheavily redacted\u201d response that \u201cleft more questions than answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHiding information from the public in the context of cruel and sometimes unlawful immigration arrests amounts to a coverup,\u201d the complaint alleges.<\/p>\n
The assemblywoman also made made 24 requests for public information detailing the circumstances of the arrests, incident reports and security camera footage, but that no documents have been produced yet. The lawsuit seeks a court order for immigration officials to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here to demand basic transparency from the government for what they\u2019ve been doing in this courthouse and around the country,\u201d Krell said, at a press conference Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy was it appropriate to ambush families in a courtroom hallway, to tackle families in front of their children and their spouses?\u201d Krell said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Fear and confusion\u2019<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that these policies have \u201cled to fear and confusion in local communities.\u201d The complaint also states that many individuals are no longer attending their immigration hearings out of fear that they will be detained.<\/p>\n
Sacramento City Councilmember Eric Guerra, who attended the press conference, said it was a \u201cfalsehood\u201d that immigrants were not getting \u201cin line\u201d and that many were trying to do things the \u201cright way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the the time where we have to protect our constitutional fundamental rights to due process,\u201d Guerra said.<\/p>\n
Representatives from ICE and EOIR did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Felicia Alvarez is a reporter at Abridged covering accountability. She\u2019s called Sacramento home since 2015 and has reported on government, health care and breaking news topics for both local and national news outlets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version: Assemblymember Maggy Krell filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday alleging a lack of transparency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122,65250],"class_list":{"0":"post-176094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-sacramento","9":"tag-sacramento-headlines","10":"tag-sacramento-news","11":"tag-secondary-highlight"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}