In an Alabama district court a few years ago, the Department of Justice made an argument familiar to those who have read immigration cases: it asked the court to keep its hands off. The department argued for what I call "double deference." First, the court should defer to the executive and legislative branches as a matter of course in immigration matters; and second, the court should defer to the jail where the plaintiff was being incarcerated since prison administrators need wide latitude in operating their lock-ups.
Author: Mark Dow
ANTHONY ROMERO is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is the ACLU's sixth executive director, and he is the first Latino and openly gay man to serve in that capacity. Born in New York City to immigrant parents from Puerto Rico, Romero was the first in his family to graduate from high school. A graduate of Stanford University Law School and Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs, he was a Dinkelspiel Scholar at Stanford, a Cane Scholar at Princeton, and a National Hispanic Scholar at both institutions.
MARK DOW and KENT WORCESTER are members of the New Politics editorial board.
Sustaining Democratic Life: An Interview with the ACLU's Anthony Romero
This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview conducted by Mark Dow and Kent Worcester with Anthony Romero in April 2004 in his lower Manhattan office.
New Politics: Yesterday during the September 11 Commission hearings, when he was defending some of the Patriot Act measures that have been criticized, Ashcroft said that a lot of what the Patriot Act did was simply to extend measures that were already in existence.
Anthony Romero: Patently false.
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