Opinion ID: 754792
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Publicity Campaign

Text: 76 In order to notify potential class members 11 of the judgment in their favor, the district court's injunction requires the INS to implement a thorough notice and publicity campaign. Specifically, the injunction calls on the INS to 1) send notice 12 to class members, if the INS is in possession of their last known addresses; 2) issue a newswire press release to news organizations in Central and South America; 3) distribute notice to the nonprofit organizations that regularly assist immigrants; 4) distribute notice to appropriate international organizations and community outreach networks; and 5) publish the notice in the Federal Register. Because the INS will have difficulty in effecting personal service on all class members, we think the district court's decision to order notice via press release is sound. 77 The government's principal objection to the publicity campaign is that the district court's order will have some absurd results. For example, the injunction requires the INS to send the English/Spanish notice to some international organizations that service immigrant populations that speak a language other than Spanish. We think this objection lacks merit. Given that Spanish is the primary language of many aliens who have been subject to final orders with respect to charges of document fraud, we think that this requirement increases the likelihood that class members will learn of the district court's ruling. Moreover, requiring bilingual notice imposes little, if any, additional burden on the government. Any adverse effect of such notice would be suffered by the non-English, non-Spanish speaking aliens who receive it, not by the government. In any event, we do not see how it does any harm to send a bilingual notice instead of a monolingual notice to a recipient who speaks neither language. Moreover, the government is free to send the notice in additional languages as well, where it deems such action to be appropriate.