Judge halts new immigration detention center in the San Joaquin Valley — for now
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the city of McFarland to temporarily halt any action related to the conditional-use permits it approved in April for a private company to operate immigration detention centers in town.
The temporary restraining order also prevents the detention facility from housing detainees, which were scheduled to begin Wednesday.
The order comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed Saturday accusing the city of “illegally” having approved the permits for the GEO Group to operate the detention centers.
“The city of McFarland has clearly violated California state law in its most recent attempt to safeguard corporate greed over the interests of its community members,” said Christina Fialho, an attorney, co-founder and executive director of Freedom for Immigrants. “Today, we have said ‘no more.’ We cannot allow McFarland or any city to expand immigration detention without properly engaging its own constituents. We are overjoyed that the courts agree and have granted our (temporary restraining order.)”
A spokesperson for the GEO Group pushed back against those criticisms and said no laws were violated.
“The Conditional Use Permits were properly issued by the McFarland City Council, and we are confident the City’s actions will be upheld by the court,” the spokesperson said.
The temporary restraining order is an “extraordinary remedy” before a full hearing on the matter takes place, according to the order. A date for a full hearing on the allegations outlined in the lawsuit is pending.
McFarland officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Freedom for Immigrants and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) filed the lawsuit, which alleges the city violated the Dignity Not Detention Act “in at least three ways, each of which invalidate its approval.”
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court on July 12, says the city violated a state law requirement to provide 180 days’ notice to the public. As required by state law, the city also failed to hold multiple hearings before taking action on the conditional-use permits for the operation of for-profit immigration detention facilities, according to the lawsuit.
After the city’s Planning Commission rejected the proposal in February, the “McFarland City Council approved them after just a single public hearing — conducted remotely and insufficiently open to the public —on April 23, 2020,” according to the lawsuit.
The statue, the lawsuit says, also specifies public hearings about immigration facilities “require maximum public participation.”
The lawsuit states McFarland officials “recognized that the proposed approval process risked violating the requirements.”
The lawsuit accuses the city of failing to properly notify the public of the detention center. The law requires the public be informed of a detention center 180 days prior to approval. McFarland only gave 104 days of notice, according to the lawsuit.
Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges violations of public meetings laws during the April 23 meeting.
“First, although the City offered dial-in and videoconferencing attendance options, it capped videoconference attendance at one hundred,” the lawsuit reads. “However, Zoom — the videoconferencing platform used for the April 23 meeting — permits up to one thousand attendees.”
Secondly, Alex Gonzalez, a community organizer with Faith in the Valley, was not allowed to address the city council during the meeting. Lastly, the lawsuit says, several other community members were also barred from commenting.
“Today we are hopeful again that McFarland residents, many of whom are the ‘essential workers’ on the frontlines of this current (coronavirus) crisis, will be provided with and heard through a fair and transparent process, and that McFarland elected officials take this opportunity to stand on the side of democracy and on the side of their community,” Gonzalez said Tuesday.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 7:26 PM.
.jpg)