Immigrant-detention officer charged with choking handcuffed migrant

A private security officer at an immigrant detention center in Texas was criminally charged last week with choking a handcuffed detainee, who was later transported to the facility's medical unit.
Charles Siringi is accused of putting his hands around the detainee's neck and throat and slamming him against walls March 31 in Conroe, Texas, according to a criminal complaint.
Siringi, 66, was charged in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas with deprivation of rights while acting under the government's authority, resulting in bodily injury. He posted a $10,000 bail Tuesday.
Siringi's attorney did not respond to requests for comment on the incident, which took place at Montgomery Processing Center. His company, GEO Group, which runs the detention center, said it no longer employed Siringi as of April 29 and that it referred the matter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Professional Responsibility after an internal review.
'We are committed to respecting the human rights and dignity of all individuals in our care, and we have a zero-tolerance policy with respect to staff misconduct,' the company said in a statement.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The charges represent a rare instance of officers at detention facilities being held criminally accountable for allegedly abusive behavior, immigration experts told The Washington Post. More often, they said, detainees file civil lawsuits — often with help from advocacy organizations — to allege wrongdoing.
Eunice Hyunhye Cho, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, said immigrants who are detained have little power to expose abuse.
'The power dynamic is so significant that people are either afraid to come forth [or] they are not believed when they raise complaints about abusive treatment,' she said. 'And facilities have all sorts of incentives to keep those types of incidents under wraps.'
In Siringi's case, the detainee alleged that the officer handcuffed him outside his housing unit and brought him into a small room with other officers, the criminal complaint says. Inside, Siringi allegedly told the officers, 'You better get him before I do,' referring to the detainee.
Siringi then grabbed the detainee by the neck and slammed him face-first into the wall, the complaint says. When the detainee turned around, Siringi allegedly applied enough force to his throat that he 'tucked his chin down to his chest because he was gasping for air.'
The detainee later said that Siringi 'did not remove his hands from his throat' and instead 'used the choke hold to move him across the room and slam him into the wall near the doorway,' according to court documents. Elbert Griffin, one of two officers who was in the room, corroborated the detainee's account and took him to the medical unit for treatment.
'Griffin stated he did not believe it was an appropriate use of force,' the complaint says, 'nor did he believe [the detainee] had been resisting in any manner.'
Jeff Migliozzi, a spokesman for the nonprofit organization Freedom for Immigrants, said Siringi's alleged misuse of force was 'unfortunately characteristic' of similar incidents the group has tracked in the past.
'A lot of people don't realize how common that actually is,' Migliozzi said. 'But again, in the vast majority of those cases, nothing results, in terms of an oversight process or some sort of lawsuit or investigation.'
Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.

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Thus, it would only be the procedural parts of a state's Anti-SLAPP laws, including the UPEPA, that would be replaced by the federal rules. The substantive parts of the state's Anti-SLAPP laws would survive and be utilized under the Erie doctrine. This brought the court to one of the questions before it: Was the UPEPA's mandatory award of fees to a defendant who successfully asserted a UPEPA special motion to be considered substantive or procedural in nature? Under the Erie doctrine, a fee-shifting provision is typically considered to be substantive in nature because it is tied to the outcome of the litigation (a procedural rule is not). But there are times when a fee-shifting provision would be procedural, such as when such fees are awarded because of a party's bad faith conduct ― but that is not tied to the outcome of the litigation. Because the UPEPA's mandatory fee award is tied to the outcome, since it can only be awarded if the defendant prevails on the UPEPA special motion, the court held that the UPEPA fee-shifting provision is substantive and not procedural. But the UPEPA in fact has two fee-shifting provisions. As mentioned, the first provision awards attorney fees to a defendant who wins on the UPEPA special motion. This is different than the second provision, by which a court has the discretion to award attorney fees to the plaintiff and against the defendant if the defendant filed the UPEPA special motion in bad faith or for purposes of delay. This latter provision is not tied to the outcome of the case, since the case continues if the defendant loses the UPEPA special motion, and thus is procedural in nature. The upshot to this is that if the defendant wins the UPEPA special motion, then the mandatory fee award in favor of the defendant is substantive and determined by state law. However, if the defendant loses the special motion then the issue of whether fees can be awarded against the defendant would be procedural in nature and determined if at all by the FRCP. The court also noted another factor in determining the UPEPA's mandatory fee award to be substantive: One of the purposes of that mandatory fee award is to deter the filing of abusive litigation. Disposing of a minor issue, the court also held that UPEPA relief is only obtainable through the filing of a UPEPA special motion and not by way of a counterclaim. The balance of the opinion deals with a conflict of law issue; namely, which state's Anti-SLAPP law would apply. The court ultimately concludes that the New Jersey UPEPA applies, and although the court's discussion of the issue is quite interesting, it is beyond the scope of this article. ANALYSIS Anti-SLAPP laws such as the UPEPA are indeed a mix of substantive and procedural law ― they are not purely one or the other. It therefore makes sense for the federal courts in applying the Erie doctrine to apply the substantive portions but reject the procedural ones. This may be the best that we get until the U.S. Supreme Court resolves the split between circuits (and that could go either way) or Congress adopts a federal Anti-SLAPP law (which is regularly introduced, but never seems to go anywhere). But in the words of the Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want. You get what you need."