Several legal services organizations filed a lawsuitlast week against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE), alleging the federal agency won't let attorneys see their clients in four states, including Louisiana.
The clients are immigration detainees in four prisons in Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Arizona.
The complaint details numerous obstacles attorneys face in attempting to communicate with detained people at the River Correctional Center in Ferriday, Louisiana, including a lack of any private, individual visitation rooms for attorneys to meet with their clients in a confidential setting, onerous scheduling requirements, and no ability to immediately speak to their clients on the phone even in exceptional circumstances.
“The right to a lawyer should be the minimum level of fairness that someone gets when the government puts them in jail,” said Homero López, Jr. Legal Director at ISLA. “However, ICE attempts to remove even that minimal semblance of fairness by constantly placing barriers that limit one’s access to their attorney.”
According to a release from the groups, research shows detained people with representation are almost seven times more likely to be released from custody and 10 times more likely to win their immigration cases than those without. Yet, they say, in at least four immigration detention facilities at which the legal organizations provide services — the Florence Correctional Center in Florence, Arizona; the Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, Florida; the Laredo Processing Center in Laredo, Texas; and the River Correctional Center in Ferriday, Louisiana – attorneys have encountered numerous obstacles to communicating with detained people, making representation extremely difficult and, sometimes, impossible.
“Access to counsel can be a matter of life or death for immigrants detained by ICE,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “When people can’t communicate with their attorneys, they may lose their case – an outcome that ultimately affects whether or not they will be permanently separated from their loved ones or sent back to dangerous conditions from which they fled. It’s past time ICE followed the law and their own policies.”
The complaint was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the American Immigration Council, the ACLU of Arizona, 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).
If you want to read it, the complaint is online here:
