Since 2014, RAICES has offered free legal services to immigrants jailed at Karnes Detention Facility in Texas, assisting up to 160 clients each day. Now Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, emboldened under the Trump administration, have been taking steps to block this help, the immigrant rights advocacy group says in a complaint released this week.
It’s a fact that immigrants who have access to legal assistance are more likely to win their cases—according to one study, as much as 12 times more likely. Because immigrants don’t have a right to a government-appointed attorney, RAICES’ free services can make all the difference. “Simply put,” the complaint states, “these policies worked.”
But for more than a month now, the group says that federal immigration officials, “in cahoots” with private prison company GEO Group, “have put obstacles in our way.” NBC News reports that “the complaints are many and include such things as ICE failing to make space available for private meetings with clients, setting new requirements for lawyers to meet with clients, so that fewer people can meet with attorneys, and eliminating a ‘walk-in’ signup list.” Once helping up to 160 people a day, that number is down to roughly 50.
The complaint further states that ICE has even stopped clients who are in a consultation with RAICES staff and volunteers from stepping out to return to their rooms to retrieve documents. “It should be noted,” RAICES writes, that ICE’s own protocol “requires that ‘written legal visitation procedures must provide for the exchange of documents between a resident and the legal representative or assistant.’”
Public pressure has worked in forcing ICE to back down from some anti-immigrant actions. Following public outcry in March, ICE released more than a dozen babies and their moms from Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center. "Every mother I spoke to said that her child was sick in some way," said Katy Murdza, advocacy coordinator at the American Immigration Council's Dilley Pro Bono Project. RAICES is calling on those outraged over this latest act to call ICE and demand officials reinstate access.
“It is incredibly shocking to see that the government is denying access to council to Karnes’ detainees because a for-profit company is telling them to do so,” RAICES tweeted. ”Allowing these companies to profit out of detaining our communities needs to stop … as an organization we’re demanding that ICE reinstate our access to individuals locked up in Karnes.”