From this:

An illegal immigrant with a long rap sheet got a $145,000 parting gift from New York City taxpayers before he was deported, after city lawyers decided his civil rights had been violated when he was held too long on Rikers Island.

Federal rules allow local law enforcement to detain suspected illegal immigrants for 48 hours after their criminal cases are resolved, to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement a chance to pick them up and move them to federal facilities.

Former Brooklyn resident Cecil Harvey, 55 -- backed by an immigration-rights advocacy group -- argued that his rights were violated when he spent more than a month in a Rikers holding pen before being transferred to ICE. Harvey was shipped to his native Barbados in October 2007; the city settled his civil suit late last year.

The landmark settlement has prompted the Correction Department to dump scores of illegal immigrants on the streets, since federal officials often fail to pick them up within the required two-day window.

For the other side of the story, slightly mitigating the above and also describing who helped, see this PDF: link:

Mr. Harvey represented himself in the litigation until the NYU Law School Immigrant Rights Clinic agreed to take on the case. Students Laura Trice and Alisa Wellek represented Mr. Harvey, supervised by Nancy Morawetz, professor of clinical law at NYU’s Immigrant Rights Clinic.

"We took the case because it related to a systemic problem at Rikers. For years we had heard about Rikers not releasing people who were subject to detainers within the required 48-hour period. We were impressed with Mr. Harvey's perseverance in challenging this practice without a lawyer. We sought to obtain compensation for him for the many months of unlawful detention he suffered as a result of Riker's actions," explained Morawetz.

Obviously, we need to follow the rules and we can't just hold people for indeterminate periods. However, $145,000 seems a bit punitive, no? And, what of all the illegal aliens that New York City is now releasing back into the community? Do Prof. Morawetz and the NYU Law School have any sort of a plan to do something about the crimes that some of those released illegal aliens will no doubt commit rather than being deported?

When can we expect Prof. Morawetz to sue ICE to make sure they do their job? Write her and politely ask: nancy.morawetz *at* nyu.edu

Note: the NYU group may have been using the name "Washington Square Legal Services" (PDF link), and Morawetz' press release includes a quote from Professor Peter L. Markowitz, Director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. Whether they were involved in this isn't known.