As of September 2022, more than 25,000 immigrants are held in nearly 185 ICE detention centers nationwide. For such detained immigrants, access to counsel can mean the difference between freedom and the ability to remain in the United States on the one hand and prolonged detention and deportation on the other. Detained immigrants with legal representation are almost seven times more likely to be released from custody while their cases are being adjudicated. Detained immigrants who are represented by counsel are more than 10 times more likely to win their immigration cases than those who are not represented.
Although immigrants have a right to legal representation in immigration proceedings, they do not have a right to government-appointed counsel. They are entirely responsible for finding their own attorneys (paid or pro bono)—an extremely difficult proposition for any detained person, but one that is made exponentially harder by the systemic barriers to communication in ICE detention centers. ICE limits detained immigrants’ access to counsel in many ways: by barring access to legal telephone calls, including by withholding from detained immigrants the option to schedule telephone calls in advance; by exacting prohibitive costs for telephone calls; by denying or arbitrarily delaying in-person legal visits; by failing to provide confidential settings for legal telephone calls and in-person visits; and by making video conferences or email unavailable as methods of communication with counsel, even at detention centers that are in remote locations far from lawyers’ offices.
We filed this lawsuit on October 13, 2022, to challenge the government’s failure to ensure compliance with constitutional requirements, federal law, and ICE’s own policies regarding access to counsel. We represent five non-profit 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), which provide free legal services to immigration detainees at 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.
The plaintiffs are represented by ACLU lawyers from the National Prison Project, the ACLUs of Arizona, Florida, Texas and D.C., and lawyers from Milbank LLP and Saul Ewing Ahrnstein & Lehr LLP.
UPDATES: On November 18, 2022, we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, seeking urgent relief for the detainees our clients represent. On February 1, 2023, Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted that motion in part and denied it in part; in particular she ordered the ICE facility in Arizona to create spaces where detainees could have confidential meetings with their lawyers. When ICE asked for more time to comply, she denied that and ordered ICE to comply promptly.
In February 2023 the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the case or alternatively to split the case into four cases and transfer them to the federal courts in each state in which an ICE facility is located. We opposed those motions, but in July the court granted the government’s motion to split the case and transferred the portions involving the facilities in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas to the federal courts in those states. ACLU-DC is no longer involved in the transferred cases. Judge Kollar-Kotelly kept the remainder of the case – involving the facility in Arizona as to which she had already ordered some relief – here in the District of Columbia court.
In August 2023 we filed an amended complaint regarding the ICE facility in Arizona. The case has a new name: Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project v. DHS. The government moved to dismiss that complaint and we opposed. Briefing was completed in October 2023. As of December 2024 we continue to await the court’s decision.
