Carlos Martinez focuses his practice on complex litigation matters. Before joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Carlos clerked for Judge Arianna J. Freeman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Judge Juan R. Sánchez of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Carlos earned his law degree from Harvard Law School, where he participated in the Criminal Justice Institute and represented indigent clients accused of crimes. As part of that clinic, he first-chaired a two-day jury trial in Boston Municipal Court and obtained a full acquittal for his client. He also served as a student attorney and training director with Harvard Defenders and an editor with the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Carlos interned at the ACLU of Northern California, the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of California, Rights Behind Bars, and the MacArthur Justice Center. Prior to law school, he worked as a defense investigator for the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem in New York and the Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco.
He earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Santa Clara University, where he studied political science.
We represent a class of more than 1,000 people held at California City Detention Facility who argue that the facility fails to provide for their basic human needs—adequate clothing, basic medical care, conditions of confinement consistent with civil (rather than criminal) detention, disability accommodations, and access to lawyers. Working with the Prison Law Office, the ACLU National Prison Project, and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, we secured class certification and a preliminary injunction requiring ICE and DHS to provide constitutionally adequate medical care, enhanced access to counsel, and temperature-appropriate clothing and blankets for people held at California City. Importantly, the court also agreed to appoint an independent monitor to ensure delivery of adequate medical care.
In reporting on the status of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Standard covered a series of federal court rulings that rebuke the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including three cases brought by Keker, Van Nest & Peters and its nonprofit partners. Read more
Law.com gave a “Litigator of the Week Shout-Out” to Keker, Van Nest & Peters for its role in securing a preliminary injunction requiring federal immigration authorities to provide constitutionally adequate medical care to people detained at the California City ICE Detention Facility, located in the Mojave Desert. Read more
U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security to provide constitutionally adequate medical care, temperature-appropriate clothing and blankets, and meaningful access to legal counsel. The court also required the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure medical care, and it provisionally certified the class, which includes the more than 1,000 individuals detained in the facility, which is run by a for-profit prison company. Read more
U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney has ordered that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security must provide competent, consistent, and effective medical care to detainees held in the California City Detention Facility, with an external monitor to be appointed to ensure that medical care meets constitutional requirements. Judge Chesney also ordered ICE to provide detained people with temperature-appropriate clothing and blankets, and to ensure timely and confidential access to legal counsel both in person and telephonically. The decision comes after a November class action lawsuit filed by Keker, Van Nest & Peters, the Prison Law Office, and the ACLU National Prison Project. Read more
Detained immigrants enduring grim conditions are suing ICE, citing meager medical care, limited access to attorneys, repeated lockdowns, and a ban on contact visits with family, reports KQED. Read more
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agreed yesterday to provide immediate medical care for two individuals being held in the California City Detention Facility, after the individuals filed their petition for emergency relief. The agreement was entered as a court order by the federal judge in San Francisco overseeing the case. Read more
Amid “inhumane” and “punitive” conditions at California City Detention Facility, a man held in the state’s largest immigration detention center faces “imminent death,” according to an emergency motion filed by Keker, Van Nest & Peters, the Prison Law Office, the ACLU, and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. Another detainee may suffer life-threatening consequences from a long-delayed cancer diagnosis and treatment. Read more
Read more
Described as “a river of cruelty,” the California City Detention Facility under ICE is the focus of a new pro bono putative class action filed by Keker, Van Nest & Peters, alongside the Prison Law Office, the ACLU, and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, challenging the inhumane and unconstitutional conditions at California’s largest immigration detention center. Read more
Seven people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sued the Trump administration over inhumane conditions at the largest immigration detention center in California, the privately owned California City Detention Facility located in Kern County. Read more