After Being Detained By ICE For 3 Months, British Film Director Sues

By CRISTINA COSTANTINI

British film director Duncan Roy filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff on Friday, after being detained for 89 days without bail due to a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hold.

Roy alleges that he was eligible for release after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor extortion charge. Instead, he claims he was kept in a legal limbo and jailed for nearly 3 months, while the two agencies blamed one another.

"The sheriff says, he's on an ICE hold, and the ICE people say, well, he's got to make bond," Roy told The Associated Press. "They keep you in this limbo where each is blaming the other organization, but basically they're colluding with each other to keep you there."

A spokeswoman from the L.A. sheriff's office, Nicole Nishida, told the AP that it is policy to hold people at request of ICE and that detainers usually last only 48 hours.

However, a report by Justice Strategies, an advocacy and research organization which analyzes the criminal justice system, found that on average, suspected undocumented immigrants are held 20 days longer by Los Angeles County Sheriff on ICE holds than they would otherwise.

While Roy is one of several named plaintiffs in a lawsuit which is seeking class-action status, ACLU staff attorney Jennie Psquarella told the AP that tens of thousands of inmates have been held on ICE detainers in Los Angeles, even though they were otherwise eligible to be released.

The British film director is not the typical ICE detainee. Los Angeles County shares fingerprint data with federal immigration authorities under a program called Secure Communities. About 93 percent of all inmates held by local authorities under Secure Communities are Latino, according to a 2011 report by the University of California Berkley. And many are unable to speak English.

Both Cook County, Ill. and the District of Columbia have passed measures that bar local authorities from holding individuals on behalf of ICE who would otherwise be released. Even when ICE offered to pay for the costs incurred from the ICE holds, or detainers, Cook County stood their ground, according to a report by The Chicago Tribune.

Pasquerella is hoping that Los Angeles county will come to a similar decision. In an interview with AP, she said:

"There has to be authority for them to actually deprive a person of liberty, and we're saying there isn't based on state and federal law."