newsletter 06/18/26

Starting the Summer: Protecting Constitutional Rights and Calling Out Executive Branch Abuses

ICAP has started the summer off at a sprint – working with state and local partners to push back against overreaching immigration enforcement, protecting religious freedom and free speech, and speaking out about Department of Justice abuses of power.

Prioritizing State and Local Resources for Public Safety over Participation in Federal Immigration Enforcement

Over the past three months, we have been working across three jurisdictions, representing state and local officials who have prioritized using their resources to build trust in their communities and protect public safety rather than to voluntarily involve themselves in ICE’s inhumane mass detention and deportation  practices.  Our expertise in this area builds from behind-the-scenes work and guidance we have broadly distributed explaining what federal immigration cooperation is required by law and what is purely voluntary.

Defending Sheriffs

While we continue to defend Indiana Sheriff Ruben Marté’s policy of not honoring ICE detainer requests, including by suing to stop Indiana’s new state law mandating compliance, we’ve expanded our defense of these policies to Washtenaw County, Michigan, and Sheriff Alyshia Dyer. ICE detainer requests are not judicial warrants and they do not assert probable cause of a crime.  Refusing to honor them not only avoids the kind of entanglement with federal immigration enforcement that harms public safety by making community members distrustful of law enforcement, but also avoids violating the Fourth Amendment rights of those ICE seeks to have detained beyond their release date under state law.  Sheriff Dyer and Washtenaw County are some of the latest targets of more than a dozen lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice over the last year targeting so-called “sanctuary cities.”  We are honored to represent Sheriff Dyer in moving to dismiss the government’s lawsuit, which seeks to commandeer the Sheriff and other County officials into enforcing its federal immigration scheme, in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

Defending States

We’re equally honored to be working with New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez to defend the state’s newly enacted “Immigrant Safety Act” against another DOJ lawsuit.  The state law prohibits local jurisdictions from contracting with ICE to provide detention facilities or entering into agreements with ICE by which local law enforcement are given the powers of federal immigration agents.  In a state in which one in eight workers is an immigrant, the state’s decision to avoid voluntary cooperation with federal immigration enforcement–including potentially inhumane detention conditions–makes eminent sense.  (And if the Attorney General’s name sounds familiar, it’s because ICAP worked with Torrez when he was the District Attorney for Bernalillo County, NM, suing an unlawful private militia–the “New Mexico Civil Guard”–for its dangerous paramilitary usurpation of the role of law enforcement during a protest in Albuquerque in 2020.  There, we successfully obtained an injunction ordering the group to stop operating as a military unit or acting as law enforcement.)

Ensuring Accountability for ICE Abuses of Power

Our work with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in its investigations into the two fatal and one non-fatal shootings by federal immigration officers in Minnesota in January has resulted in not only a suit against DOJ and DHS demanding access to the investigation evidence from all three shootings, but also the arrest of the ICE agent responsible for the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in May.  And we’re working with Hennepin County in its prosecution of an ICE agent for pointing his weapon at a motorist and his passenger during a fit of road rage.  The agent now seeks to “remove” his prosecution to federal court, arguing that he was acting within his authority as a federal agent and is entitled to immunity from state prosecution because of that. Needless to say, we and the County disagree, and we’re fighting against the removal. 

We’re also helping to create a public record of ICE abuses.  Working with the Illinois Accountability Commission, ICAP Special Litigation Counsel Julia Gegenheimer dedicated countless hours collecting evidence and providing legal analysis that will inform the way we view federal immigration for years to come.  The Commission has published its final report, which is full of shocking testimony about what occurred during “Operation Midway Blitz,” the individual and community impact, and recommendations for a path forward.

Protecting Religious Freedom, Freedom of Speech, and more

Religious Freedom

In a reprise of the work we did in 2018 to prevent the construction of a portion of the border wall that would have cut off the historic La Lomita Chapel south of the wall in Hidalgo County, Texas, we’re now representing the Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, to prevent the taking of Diocesan property to build a wall that would deface holy site Mount Cristo Rey.  For more than eight decades, a 29-foot-tall limestone statue of Jesus Christ has sat atop the mountain, the site of annual pilgrimages by Catholics and other people of faith in the borderland region.  The construction of a border wall at the foot of the mountain is contrary to Catholic teaching that migrants must be welcomed, and physically threatens the site and access to it. More details on Mount Cristo Rey can be found here, here, and here.

Freedom of Speech

In the first three days of June, Senior Counsels Shelby Calambokidis, Elizabeth Cruikshank, and Bill Powell traveled to Cincinnati for oral arguments in two of our cases on back-to-back days in the Sixth Circuit. 

On June 2, Bill masterfully argued in defense of a lower court injunction against a new Tennessee law that criminalizes the “recruitment” of a pregnant minor for the purpose of procuring an abortion, even in a state where abortion is legal.  With no definition of “recruitment,” the statute violates the First Amendment rights of those like our clients, who provide information about how and where to access legal abortion.

On June 3, Elizabeth continued the trend of stellar oral advocacy, arguing en banc (before all 16 active judges on the court) on behalf of a man jailed for civil contempt for being late on his child support payments.  Within 90 seconds of being placed in a general population cell, he was brutally beaten by two fellow detainees with a history of assaults in the jail, permanently disabling him and forcing him into a life of assisted living.  At issue is whether an objective or subjective legal standard should be applied to “failure to protect” claims brought under the Fourteenth Amendment–here, allegations that the county’s custom of failing to follow policies requiring the classification of detainees based on risk of violence resulted in the injury to our client.

Speaking Out Against Political Prosecutions, DOJ Corruption, and Domestic Extremism

On June 9, ICAP Executive Director Mary McCord testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the dangers of using the prosecutorial power to target people and organizations based on viewpoint.  Mary drew from her decades as a prosecutor to warn about how the one-sided use of fraud and other criminal tools against disfavored people and groups not only undermines the fair administration of justice, but also infringes on First Amendment rights.  Referring to the Department’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center–the subject of the hearing–Mary called upon the words of former Supreme Court Justice and Attorney General Robert Jackson, who warned that when the prosecutor “picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense. . . . It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.”  Watch the full hearing here. 

Both Mary and ICAP Legal Director Rupa Bhattacharyya had much to say in response to the Department of Justice’s so-called “settlement” of President Trump’s collusive lawsuit against the IRS, which resulted in the creation of a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund and an effective “pardon” from all criminal and civil investigations, examinations, audits, claims, and prosecutions brought by any federal department or agency on any subject, based on anything that could have been initiated as of the date of the settlement against Trump, his family, and his businesses.  Check out just a sampling of their commentary on WBUR’s Here & Now, Bloomberg, CNN, and CBS.

And in Just Security, after the horrific shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, Mary explained how the use of the “terrorist” label endangers constitutional rights and drives extremist violence.

Save the Date!

“Democratic Governance and the Rule of Law”: In celebration of Constitution Day, ICAP, The Guggenheim Foundation, and the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation will host a panel of renowned constitutional law experts at Georgetown Law on September 17 at 5:30 pm for an engaging discussion.  You can expect more details on this event, including RSVP instructions, later this summer.