California refers U.S. citizen prisoners to ICE based on racist assumptions, lawsuit says

California prison officials are violating the rights of U.S. citizens and other lawful residents in state custody by referring them to federal immigration officials based solely on racist assumptions about their status in the country, according to a lawsuit filed this week by current and former prisoners and their advocates.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, as a policy, refers all “foreign-born” state prisoners to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and often places immigration “holds” on them as a result, according to the ACLU of Northern California, which represents prisoners in the case.

However, corrections officials are making those referrals based on “nothing more than their perception of an incarcerated person’s place of birth, race, ethnicity or how well they speak English,” the advocacy group said.

Prisoners under immigration holds are often prevented from participating in certain rehabilitative, educational, vocational and “alternative to custody” programs and prevented from living in certain lower-security housing units, in violation of their rights under the California Constitution, the lawsuit alleges.

In one example outlined in the suit, a U.S. citizen who was born in California to Cambodian immigrants was referred to ICE — and denied access to rehabilitative and other state prison programs as a result — because state prison officials wrongly perceived her to be a Mexican national.

“I just couldn’t believe that something like this could happen to someone like me,” the woman, Roth Chan, 37, told The Times during a call from prison Friday.

Chan remains under an ICE hold, according to documentation she and her attorneys shared with The Times. State corrections officials have told her they are awaiting action on her case from ICE.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it was reviewing the lawsuit Friday and could not comment. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom also did not respond to a request for comment. The ACLU has called on Newsom and others to immediately end the practice of ICE referrals.

The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court in Alameda County, also calls on the court to end the state corrections department’s practice of referring “foreign-born” prisoners to ICE, and to enjoin the state from making prison programming and housing decisions based on such ICE holds.

“CDCR’s unlawful policies put U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and other persons who are not deportable at risk of mistaken or unlawful immigration enforcement, and force them to expend resources attempting to prove their citizenship or lawful status to avoid improper detention by ICE — all because of these individuals’ national origin, race, or ethnicity,” the lawsuit states.

In a phone call Friday from the Central California Women’s Facility, Chan said the experience of being labeled a Mexican national and reported to ICE when she is in fact a born-and-raised Californian of Cambodian heritage was hard to explain — and debilitating.

When she learned of her ICE hold, she was “devastated” and “unable to function,” filled with “anxiety and worries” and terrified that ICE agents would come for her in the night.

“I wasn’t sleeping well, and I wasn’t socializing like I usually do with other inmates,” she said.

Chan, who said she is incarcerated on a burglary conviction and has been denied access to certain programs because of her ICE hold, said her protests to state prison officials about being a U.S. citizen have been ignored.

“I was told that it wasn’t really anything to be done or to be changed,” she said.

Former prisoner Anouthinh “Choy” Pangthong, 42, also said his ICE hold had negative effects on his mental health.

Pangthong came to the U.S. as an infant after his Laotian family fled to a refugee camp in Thailand, where he was born in 1980.

When he was a teenager, his best friend was shot in the head and died in his arms, he told The Times in an interview Friday. He spiraled out of control, he said, and at 15 landed in prison on a sentence of 25 years to life for killing a man during a botched carjacking in Stockton.

When he was 17, his mother became a naturalized citizen. As her minor son, he received citizenship as well, he said. But California prison officials didn’t see it that way.

Pangthong said that after he was transferred from a youth facility to an adult prison, state prison officials brought in federal immigration officials who interviewed him and told him he wasn’t a citizen. For the next two decades, he remained under an ICE detainer, he said.

“It was really damaging, emotionally and mentally,” he said. “I feel like maybe had I not had the detainer over me, my whole mentality, my mental state and emotional state, would have been different,” Pangthong said.

Eventually, after connecting with an immigration attorney, Pangthong submitted paperwork to ICE related to his mother’s naturalization, and the agency conceded that he was a citizen and lifted its detainer. Not long after, state corrections officials granted Pangthong’s release, acknowledging his growth and rehabilitation since his teenage years.

Today, Pangthong works for an organization in Stockton called Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities, where he mentors kids with the types of emotional issues he faced as a teen.

Pangthong said he joined the lawsuit because he doesn’t want others to go through what he went through.

“What I really hope comes about from this is a change, a meaningful change,” he said. “I really hope that CDCR changes its course.”

Chan, who remains behind bars under an ICE hold, said she is still worried — but also hopeful since she connected with the ACLU.

“I hope that things will get better and things won’t have to be this way for me or anybody else, and that CDCR can really look into it — fix the error and give answers to inmates like me, because no answer is the worst,” she said.

The ACLU called on Newsom to immediately end the practice of ICE referrals from state prisons — which it said he could do with “a stroke of a pen” if he wanted.

Otherwise, the organization said, it is prepared to fight in court.