• Those covered by the settlement include Southern California immigrants who signed "voluntary return" forms between June 1, 2009, and August 28, 2014, were expelled to Mexico, had reasonable claims to reside in the United States while their cases were being heard and meet other conditions.

• The ACLU set up a hotline for potential beneficiaries of the settlement and their families: 619-398-4189 within the United States and 01-800-681-6917 in Mexico. Information also is available by writing to: avd(at)aclusandiego.org.

• The settlement also requires the government to clearly state to immigrant detainees the potential consequences of agreeing to voluntary returns and bars authorities from pressuring them to sign the forms.

Inland immigrant-rights organizations are launching a campaign to spread the word about a court settlement that could allow thousands of Mexican immigrants to return to the United States to have their cases heard in immigration court.

U.S. District Court Judge John A. Kronstadt last week approved the settlement between the federal government and attorneys for nine immigrants who accused authorities of using deceptive and sometimes coercive tactics to get them to waive their rights to immigration hearings.

The government did not admit guilt in the settlement. One of the plaintiffs in the case is from San Bernardino and another is from Mecca, in the eastern Coachella Valley.

Many people who could benefit from the settlement are not aware of it, said Luis Nolasco, a San Bernardino-based community engagement and policy advocate for the ACLU of Southern California, whose foundation helped represent the plaintiffs.

Representatives of several groups will speak about the settlement and distribute leaflets at immigration-related Inland events in the coming months, Nolasco said at a news conference Monday, March 2, in front of the San Bernardino office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the federal agencies that was sued.

There also will be an educational campaign within Mexico and in other parts of Southern California, said Anna Castro, a spokeswoman for the ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties, which also helped represent plaintiffs.

Those covered by the settlement include hundreds or thousands of other immigrants who signed “voluntary return” forms and meet certain conditions. Voluntary return waives immigrants’ rights to pursue their cases in immigration court.

Many people who signed the forms were not fully informed of their rights and of the potential severe consequences of voluntary return, said Gabriela Rivera, an ACLU attorney.

ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that when voluntary returns are used, “in no case is coercion or deception tolerated.”

The San Bernardino plaintiff, Arnulfo Santana, 46, said in Spanish that he was subject to “psychological pressure and intimidation” to sign the form. Agents threatened to deport his wife and put his two U.S. citizen daughters in government care if he didn’t sign, said Santana, who has lived in the United States since 1986.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based anti-illegal-immigration group, criticized the government for agreeing to the settlement.

“I think this speaks volumes about the administration’s commitment to immigration enforcement, that they threw in the towel and didn’t fight this,” Vaughan said.

Vaughan said the goal in allowing the migrants to return to the United States is to drag their cases through the legal system as long as possible, in part with the hope that changes in immigration law or policy will allow them to stay.

Three immigrant-rights groups joined the nine individual plaintiffs in suing the government, including two that primarily serve people in the Inland Empire: the San Bernardino Community Service Center and the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, which advocates for day laborers in Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties.

“It’s a badge of honor and pride to say we were able to stand up to the United States government and win,” said Fernando Romero, executive director of the opportunity center. “We’ve been saying for years that these coercive practices were occurring but nobody believed us.”

Source:The Press Enterprise