East Haven Settles Suit on Civil Rights - NYTimes.com: EAST HAVEN, Conn. — A Connecticut town has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit by Latino residents and to adopt what a lawyer called some of the nation’s strictest limits on immigration enforcement by a local police force.
East Haven will not keep people detained at the request of immigration authorities unless they have a criminal warrant signed by a judge. The town will no longer hold a person solely because of a civil detainer, a request from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement that state or local authorities notify the agency before releasing someone, so that it can transfer the person to federal custody.
The East Haven Police Department “now has the strongest separation of policing and immigration enforcement of any law enforcement agency in Connecticut and, I believe, in the nation,” said Michael J. Wishnie, a Yale Law School professor who helped represent the plaintiffs through the school’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic.
