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Court Upholds Blocking Deportation Of Somalis
Seattle Times, WA – September 19, 2003
Somali immigrants facing deportation cannot be sent back to their East African nation because the country does not have a functioning government to accept them, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.
In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a January ruling by U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle and let proceed a class-action lawsuit seeking to stop the deportation of thousands of Somali immigrants nationwide.
The majority opinion found that the deportation statute required acceptance by the country where an immigrant would be deported.
The decision also upheld the release of four Somali men who were being detained in Seattle. Pechman ordered them released in January, citing a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court case that prohibits indefinitely detaining people who face deportation but whose countries don't accept them.
The men were facing deportation for minor violations.
Somalia has been without a central government since the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. With no evidence that conditions are likely to change in the near future, "there was no rational reason to require them to continue detention," Pechman wrote in her January ruling.
Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima, who wrote the majority opinion, called Pechman's decision "well reasoned."
There were more than 2,700 Somalis facing deportation as of January, including 39 who were being detained.
Lawyers representing the Somalis applauded yesterday's ruling.
"We are very pleased with a decision that will have such a dramatic impact on thousands of Somalis across the country," said attorney Karol Brown of the Perkins Coie law firm in Seattle.
Senior 5th Circuit Judge Thomas M. Reavley was the dissenter on the panel, stating that Congress in 1996 gave immigration officials "broad authorization of removal" without the acceptance of the country where an immigrant would be deported.
Officials with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service, are reviewing the decision.
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