Texas group joins migrant suit

[Blackaxe]

A Texas civil rights group has joined a top San Francisco-area law firm to expand a lawsuit accusing immigration officials of imposing hardship on thousands of legal immigrants by delaying their green cards.

The lawsuit, filed this week in a San Francisco federal court, asks to be certified as a class action, which would allow it to represent the interests of an estimated 10,000 legal immigrants, said Martin R. Acevedo, associate director for the Texas Lawyers' Committee.

The lawsuit contends that legal immigrants who have completed a lengthy bureaucratic process still fear harassment and arrest because the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has delayed issuing green cards for months and, in some cases, years.

The delay leaves them in legal limbo without the documents they are required to carry at all times, the lawsuit says.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2671784