Hundreds of immigrants with mental illnesses who were ordered deported after representing themselves in immigration court may be eligible to return to the United States under the terms of a settlement between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Department of Homeland Security.

The settlement, finalized in U.S. District Court last week, will allow eligible immigrants with serious mental illnesses the opportunity to reopen their cases, with the potential to return to the U.S.

“It gives a measure of fairness and dignity to people who were denied it for years in our immigration system,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Southern California office.

The settlement applies to immigrants with mental disabilities who were detained in Arizona, California and Washington after Nov. 21, 2011, and were deported without legal representation in court and without a proper competency determination, according to the ACLU.


Mental illnesses considered under the settlement include psychosis, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depressive disorder, according to court documents.

Provisions of the settlement also encompass lawful permanent residents or other visa holders who were deported during the given time frame.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, which is handling the case, declined to comment.

Robin Hvidston, executive director of the Claremont-based group, “We the People Rising,” which advocates for stricter immigration enforcement, questioned the court decision.


Hvidston said officials need to focus their resources on U.S. citizens across California. Veterans, the homeless and the disabled are in need of attention and tax-payer funded assistance.

“This is not a system that’s working well for the citizens — to have a judge ruling in favor of people in our country illegally and who’ve already gone back home,” she said.

Because the Otay Mesa detention facility has a judge assigned to mental health cases, the immigration prison houses many of Southern California’s mentally ill detainees, said Bardis Vakili, a staff attorney at the ACLU of San Diego.

Detainees who are San Diego residents and who have mental health issues are held in Otay, and oftentimes mental health detainees are transferred to the prison from Los Angeles and other cities in the area.


They’re ordered deported through the San Diego immigration court, Vakili said.

The class-action lawsuit was originally filed by the ACLU and other civil-rights groups in 2010 on behalf of Jose Antonio Franco-Gonzalez and Guillermo Gomez-Sanchez, immigrants with mental disabilities who were detained for several years after being deemed mentally incompetent to represent themselves in immigration proceedings.

Dr. David Folsom, vice chair of clinical affairs for the department of psychiatry at UC San Diego Health, said that while people with minor or moderate mental disabilities are typically capable of representing themselves in court, those with serious mental illnesses aren’t.

“Deportation proceedings are extremely high stakes. If you have to represent yourself, you want to be able to do it with your full ability,” he said.


Following two federal orders, DHS and the Department of Justice implemented several new procedures that protect unrepresented detainees with mental illnesses, including screening immigration detainees for possible mental health concerns; the availability of competency hearings and independent psychological or psychiatric evaluations; and qualified representatives for detainees who are deemed mentally incompetent.

The settlement comes just weeks after 12 unauthorized immigrants returned to the U.S. under the provisions of an earlier class-action lawsuit settlement between the ACLU and DHS.

That lawsuit accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol in Southern California of using coercive tactics to pressure unauthorized immigrants into voluntarily leaving the United States. The suit said the immigrants were deprived of their right to be heard by an immigration judge, who might have granted them legal status under certain programs.

ICE and Customs and Border Protection previously declined to comment on the matter.


The ACLU has been fielding thousands of calls from potential class-action members since preliminary approval of the settlement was announced last year, though so far only “dozens” have qualified, said Anna Castro, spokeswoman for the ACLU in San Diego.

Castro declined to provide a specific number of eligible deportees, saying some may choose to remain in Mexico after having lived there for several years.

tatiana.sanchez@sduniontribune.com • (619) 293-1380