Civil rights advocates said in a letter to the Biden administration last year that federal immigration officials have consistently set up roadblocks making it just about impossible for detained immigrants to access legal help. New key findings from a comprehensive report looking at more than 170 immigration detention facilities continue to confirm that.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials “have systematically restricted basic modes of communication between attorneys and detained immigrants,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says. In many cases, officials simply refused to answer the phone, the report revealed. ”At 20 percent of the detention facilities called by researchers, no one ever picked up the phone or operators refused to answer basic questions about attorney access.”
RELATED STORY: ICE lies again, this time claiming to Congress that detained people have had ‘unabated’ legal access
Researchers said in the “No Fighting Chance: ICE’s Denial of Access to Counsel in U.S. Immigration Detention Centers” report that immigration officials across dozens of other facilities commonly took steps to block aid.
“At least 58 ICE detention facilities do not allow attorneys to schedule phone calls with a detained client at a certain date and time,” the ACLU said in a statement. “Attorneys at nearly half of the 44 facilities for which we received attorney survey responses reported arbitrary delays or denial of access to their clients at the facility.” When immigrants and attorneys are in theory allowed to meet, “respondents at several facilities reported that in-person visits do not take place in confidential settings, destroying attorney-client privilege.”
“Not only are these barriers to legal representation unconstitutional—they also increase the likelihood that people will be unlawfully held in prolonged detention or deported,” said ACLU’s National Prison Project Borchard Fellow and report author Aditi Shah. “In that regard, access to counsel can literally be a matter of life or death for people, either by virtue of being held in dangerous conditions for extensive periods or returned to the violence they fled.”
When detained immigrants are able to access legal representation, they are up to 10 times more likely to be able to stay in the U.S., the Vera Institute of Justice has said. The ACLU said that in the current fiscal year so far, “79 percent of detained people in removal proceedings lacked counsel.”
Yet ICE dared to claim in March that it has offered detained people “’unabated’ access to lawyers during the pandemic”—and told this outrageous lie in a report to Congress, Roll Call reported. American Immigration Council called ICE’s claim “blatantly false,” pointing to last year’s letter “highlighting the ‘host of obstacles’ to attorney access in ICE detention facilities nationwide.” But ICE didn’t bother to respond to the letter at that time, the organization said. Roll Call reported that ICE’s report “also surprised congressional aides,” who called it “very disingenuous.”
“The ACLU recommends the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ultimately phase out the immigration detention system and invest in community-based social services as alternatives to detention,” the statement said. Mass detention is simply unnecessary. Per recent TRAC Immigration data, nearly 73% of people in immigration detention have no criminal record at all. “Many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”
“In the meantime, the ACLU urges DHS to ensure access to private, confidential, free, and scheduled access to legal communication and in-person visits in detention, and to conduct proper oversight of access to counsel at all ICE detention facilities,” the organization said. “The ACLU also recommends Congress pass legislation to reduce funding for ICE detention, and ensure that DHS removes barriers to legal access.”
RELATED STORIES:
Immigrants go through hell trying to access legal help while in ICE detention—and it's on purpose
Advocates say ICE continues to deny Haitians detained at New Mexico facility access to legal help
