The Stanford Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic (IRC), together with the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the ACLU of Southern California (ACLUSC) and the National Lawyers Guild of San Francisco (NLGSF) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, under the Freedom of Information Act, to gain access to agency records about the stipulated removal program, which they say has deported over 96,000 non-citizens since its inception that may go as far back as 12 years ago.
The argument is this: Stipulated removal allows the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to remove a non-citizen, even one with valid defenses against deportation, as long as the non-citizen signs an order. DHS appears to target non-citizens in immigration detention for stipulated removal, and does not allow the non-citizen to appear before a judge prior to being deported.
In the lawsuit, NLGSF et al. v U.S. DHS, the plaintiffs note that news reports, Congressional testimony, and agency press releases reveal that the DHS and DOJ have broadly implemented stipulated removal on a nationwide basis for at least 12 years. However, DHS and DOJ have failed to produce records that reflect the full scope of stipulated removal's implementation, and the select information DHS and DOJ have divulged to date provide a "strong indication that other documents have been improperly withheld."
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