ACLU, civil rights groups file suit against ICE detention
31st October 2022 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
The federal detention facility in Ferriday, La., is one of four Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers that are the target of a lawsuit by the ACLU and several other civil rights organizations on behalf of detained immigrants whom the organizations say have routinely been denied access to the legal representation to which the groups believe the detainees have a right.
The lawsuit alleges that attorneys attempting to consult with detainees at the River Correctional Center in Ferriday face several obstacles to such access, including a lack of private, individual visitation rooms; burdensome scheduling red tape; and an inability to even speak with their clients on the phone, even during exceptional situations.
The other three detention facilities named in the lawsuit are the Florence Correctional Center in Florence, Ariz.; the Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, Fla.; and the Laredo Processing Center in Laredo, Texas.
“ICE’s restrictions on access to counsel in detention facilities is unfortunately a systemic and nationwide problem,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “In light of the fact that these are constitutionally required protections, it’s shocking that ICE exercises such little care for people held in its custody with respect to one of the most fundamental protections that people have.”
The lawsuit, which was filed Oct. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, states that “the majority of detained immigrants are unrepresented in immigration proceedings, often because they are indigent and cannot afford to hire counsel and/or because many ICE detention facilities are located in remote areas hundreds of miles from the nearest immigration attorneys.”
The filing adds that “ICE detention facilities across the country currently impose alarming restrictions on detained immigrants’ ability to access their counsel, including at the Four Detention Facilities [named in the suit]. These conditions are not new in the ICE detention system. To the contrary, the rampant, systemwide restrictions on access to counsel at ICE detention facilities have been well-documented and litigated in recent years. Nonetheless, significant deficiencies persist, including at the Four Detention Facilities.”
Cho said the alleged violations of the right to legal representation by ICE result in large part because of a lack of oversight of the department; she said that earlier this year, ICE officials even told Congress that ICE fails to track the issue and fails to inspect detention facilities for violations of attorney access policies at most ICE facilities across the country.
Specifically, regarding the reported civil rights violations at the RCC in Ferriday, Cho said legal-service organizations like the Immigrant Justice Campaign, as well as Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, alerted the ACLU to the situation at Ferriday. The IJC and ISLA represent people trapped in detention by immigration services.
“Their attorneys described the many challenges they face in representing clients in detention: the inability to have private, confidential conversations, which is key to attorney-client communication; the inability to exchange documents for signature in a timely fashion; the inability to schedule and reach clients in detention.”
“The vast majority of people held in immigration detention in Louisiana do not have attorneys – and the restrictions that ICE has enacted in detention only make it much worse,” she added.
An ICE spokesperson said that ICE does not comment on pending litigation, including the recent ACLU legal action. However, the spokesperson pointed to ICE’s standing policies on detainees’ access to legal representation.
The listed ICE guidelines include the dissemination to detainees of lists of free legal resources and services, including pro bono representation; virtual attorney visitation at 17 detention facilities across the country; access via a pro bono telephone system to an American Bar Association information line; and access to a law library, legal materials and equipment.
According to ICE policy, employees and staff at every detention facility know legal visitation should be permitted, including virtual, non-contact visitation, and legal visitation sessions are undertaken under all federal COVID-19 response policies for safety and health.
Other internal ICE policies regarding legal visitation for all detained immigrants who have been placed into the removal process exist and are ostensibly followed, according to an ICE email.
The other organizations and agencies that have signed on to join the ACLU in representing the detained immigrants acting as plaintiffs include the American Immigration Council; the state ACLU branches in Arizona, Washington,D.C., Florida and Texas; and Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP; and Millbank LLP on behalf of non-profit legal service organizations Americans for Immigrant Justice (AIJ), Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP), the Immigration Justice Campaign for the American Immigration Council (IJC), Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy (ISLA), and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES).
Cho said a primary goal of the lawsuit is forcing immigration officials to follow the guidelines of ICE and other government agencies to protect the rights of the detainees.
“We hope that ICE will be required to provide and ensure basic attorney access protections in the detention facilities at issue in the lawsuit – notably the same attorney access protections that are available at many prisons and jails nationwide.”
This article originally published in the October 31, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
