ACLU lawsuit: Federal government kept ICE detainees in Louisiana from talking to lawyers
Several legal organizations filed a lawsuit Thursday against Immigrations and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) for unlawfully preventing attorneys from communicating with immigrants detained in four detention facilities in Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Arizona.
The complaint details how attorney attempts to communicate with their detained clients at the River Correctional Center in Ferriday, Louisiana, including a lack of privacy, individual visitation rooms for attorneys to meet with their clients in a confidential setting, onerous scheduling requirements, and no ability to immediately speak
"The right to a lawyer should be the minimum level of fairness that someone gets when the government puts them in jail," Homero López, Jr., legal director at ISLA, said. "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 press release from the ACLU, 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, the ACLU said, 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, possible.
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"Access to counsel can be a matter of life or death for immigrants detained by ICE," Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project, said. "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 is brought by the American Civil Liberties (ACLU), the American Immigration Council, the ACLU of Arizona, D.C., Florida, and Texas, and the 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 Immigration Center for Educational and Legal Services.
The full complaint can be accessed at aclu.org.
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This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: Lawsuit against ICE accuses agency of blocking attorneys from clients
