As brush fires swept the Everglades area in western Miami-Dade County last month, the Krome Detention Facility, used by U.S.. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was evacuated. Hundreds of immigrant detainees were put on buses and planes, and temporarily shipped as far as Louisiana and Colorado while the fires burned nearby.<\/p>\n
The incident has opened a can of worms in federal court after a federal judge was notified that 47 of those detainees were shipped outside the Southern District of Florida in direct violation of court orders. When Miami-based Judge Michael Moore was alerted to the 47 violations, he ordered a deeper look into how often ICE had violated similar court orders in recent months.<\/p>\n
The answer alarmed him, and prompted him to respond with force in a hearing on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Attorneys at the Department of Justice alerted Moore that an estimated 116 detainees have recently been removed from South Florida in direct violation of court orders, a significant increase from the original 47 number. Some of those violations were never reported to the court until Moore started asking. One court order violation was reported to a federal judge the date before the hearing, weeks after the fact. During the hearing on the rampant violations, a visibly frustrated Moore told attorneys for ICE and the Justice Department that the violations would not stand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re telling me it\u2019s incompetence instead of willingness I can accept that,\u201d said Moore. \u201cBut we need competence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thursday morning\u2019s hearing was jam-packed with interns and clerks of Moore\u2019s fellow federal judges, waiting to hear of the widespread ramifications of what the judge would say. Orders from a long list of federal judges had been violated, including a handful that came from Moore himself. Moore had to allow some to sit in the jury box in order to accommodate the size of the crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want you to hide behind the brushfire, because there are cases that didn\u2019t have to do with the brushfire,\u201d Moore told ICE and DOJ attorneys. “There have been a number of transfers over the previous months that had nothing to do with the brushfires.”<\/p>\n
He noted that some detainees not only had been moved to other states, but some have been \u201cremoved from the United States\u201d in direct violation of court orders.<\/p>\n
The court orders requiring detainees not to be removed from the Southern District of Florida were habeus corpus petitions \u2014 the mechanism that allows detainees to challenge the legality of their detention. <\/p>\n
ICE has been routinely denying immigration detainees the bond hearings where they can contest the legality of their detention, a legal stance pro-immigration advocates have been actively fighting.<\/p>\n
In May, a federal appeals court judge in Atlanta ordered<\/a> ICE to provide bond hearings to all immigrant detainees in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. The ruling stemmed from issues that cropped up at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami, a short walk from the federal courthouse where Thursday\u2019s hearing took place.<\/p>\n