Miami federal judge orders a new fact-finder to investigate ICE detention centers
After a conflict of interest surfaced two weeks ago involving a Miami law firm charged with investigating South Florida immigration jails, a Miami federal judge has appointed a new observer to complete the task.
Over the weekend, U.S. District Court Judge Marcia G. Cooke assigned Matthew C. Dates – a Miami attorney who represented Secret Service agents during their testimony before the grand jury investigating President Clinton in the 1990s – to determine whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have violated her court orders aimed at preventing coronavirus cases behind bars.
Cooke’s decision to hire Dates, a Stearns Weaver Miller attorney, comes exactly two weeks after she abruptly reversed her order to have Michael B. Chavies – a longtime Miami trial lawyer, former Miami-Dade circuit judge and partner at Akerman LLP in Miami – do the job: inspect and investigate the Krome Processing Center in Miami-Dade, the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach and the Glades Detention Center in Moore Haven.
Cooke offered no explanation on why she reversed her order just hours after she filed it, but according to Akerman’s own website, the firm represented long-time client The GEO Group -- a private prisons company that is contracted to run several prisons and detention centers nationwide, including the Broward detention facility -- in a $307 million acquisition.
The law firm had also done white-collar work, defense work and regulatory litigation involving federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees ICE.
Cooke’s new order filed late Friday was nearly identical to the first. Both say that “a continued failure to provide detainees with bare minimum necessities and supplies to survive the pandemic is evidence of deliberate indifference to medical needs, tantamount to the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment because it increases the risk of exposure to a lethal and highly-contagious disease.”
Cooke added: “The Eighth Amendment does not mandate comfortable prisons, but neither does it permit inhumane ones... Accordingly, the Court finds it appropriate to appoint a special master... to assess whether ICE is committing an ongoing violation of the detainees’ constitutional rights.”
Cooke’s order, part of an ongoing lawsuit seeking the release of about 1,200 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, says Dates will have the authority to request any records, physically inspect the three facilities and take photos and videos of conditions inside. Cooke said Dates’ findings will be filed under seal until they are redacted and made public.
Dates, who had no comment Monday, has experience defending allegations made by the U.S. government regarding securities fraud, Clean Water Act violations, and Ponzi schemes. According to the law firm’s website, Dates spent about seven years at the United States Attorney’s Office as an assistant U.S attorney in the executive, narcotics, major crimes and appellate divisions. At one point, he also supervised the Office of the Special Counsel for Public Affairs.
He will be paid $650 an hour until the order expires on Sept. 1. The cost is to be split equally between ICE and the detainees’ lawyers, Cooke said.
Cooke’s designation of an investigator came in response to a recent motion filed by immigration lawyers accusing ICE of violating the courts’ April 2020 order by: co-mingling covid-positive detainees with individuals who have not been confirmed with the disease, failing to provide cleaning supplies and masks to detainees and not educating detainees about the COVID-19 pandemic. The detainees and their attorneys also accuse the agency of not promoting or enforcing social distancing within the detention centers.
This story was originally published July 20, 2020 at 11:35 AM.
