Attorneys for travelers detained at Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend say their clients were asked to sign forms giving up their legal residency status.
Several people with green cards traveling from countries targeted under President Donald Trump’s immigration executive order were held for hours and questioned by Customs and Border Protection officers.
During those interviews, the agents put forms in front of the detainees and tried to persuade them to sign away their residency status, said Stacy Tolchin, a private attorney working with the ACLU in representing detainees.
“We believe immigration was trying to coerce them into abandoning their permanent residency status,” Tolchin said.
In a federal court filing Saturday on behalf of Fatema Farmad and Marzieh Moosavizadeh Yazdi, the attorneys said the immigration agents’ actions amounted to an attempt to “coerce individuals to sign a form to relinquish their lawful permanent resident status or otherwise withdraw their applications for admission.”