Bay Area Groups Speak Out on ICE Practices

Four Bay Area Immigrants’ Rights Groups Call on Government to Revise Immigration Enforcement Practices

SAN FRANCISCO – Four Bay Area immigrants’ rights organizations spoke out today against the federal government’s current immigration enforcement practices. The four organizations – the Asian Law Caucus, the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic, the Centro Legal de la Raza, and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center – provide legal representation and advocate on behalf of Bay Area non-citizens detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, also known as ICE. The groups issued a joint statement as part of a National Week of Action by immigrants’ rights groups to hold the government accountable for its immigration enforcement practices.

Of special concern to the four groups is the way the structure of the immigration enforcement system violates the basic promises of fairness and due process at the core of the American legal system. “Immigrants have far fewer due process rights than those guaranteed by the Constitution, including no right to an attorney until after they have incriminated themselves,” said Angie Junck, staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, referring to how detained immigrants often have no access to a lawyer until after they have been interrogated by the authorities.

“And they have no right to an appointed attorney ever,” she said. Immigrants in deportation proceedings have no right to an appointed lawyer, and many cannot afford to hire a private one. The four non-profit groups try to fill the void, but can take only a handful of cases.

The practice by ICE of sending immigrants to detention centers out of state was also condemned by the four groups. Immigrants detained in the Bay Area are sent as far away as Eloy, Arizona and Pearsall, Texas. Fewer immigration attorneys in those remote areas means more immigrants go unrepresented in Immigration Court. Separation from family members often means that Immigration Judges never see crucial evidence or testimony.

“Involuntarily transferring detainees out of state often means that immigrants’ access to counsel, as well as access to the family and community networks they may require for their defense, will be compromised,” said Raha Jorjani, staff attorney at the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic.

Holly Cooper, associate director of the Davis clinic, said that the conditions in immigration jails are also a problem. “The conditions of confinement are deplorable and detention conditions are in desperate need of regulation and oversight,” she said. According to Cooper, many immigrants with good legal claims give up their rights because the conditions in detention are so poor. “Like sending immigrants far away from their lawyers and families, the deplorable detention conditions also prevent them from exercising their rights,” she said.

In addition to condemning the barriers that prevent immigrants from exercising their rights, the groups noted that over -aggressive immigration enforcement has resulted in the detention and deportation of increasing numbers of American citizens. “The Asian Law Caucus currently represents two citizens in immigration detention,” said Theodore Roethke, Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Asian Law Caucus. “Around ten of our current citizen clients were in ICE custody at one point or another,” he added.

According to Roethke, United States citizens ensnared by the immigration system can spend months or years in detention, and although the immigration authorities often portray such cases as unique, in fact they are common. Roethke referred to an Associated Press investigation published Tuesday that documented 55 such cases, according to him just a small sample.

Cassandra Lopez, Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Centro Legal de la Raza, said that even when detainees are not citizens or permanent residents, they are often arrested after being racially profiled. “Every week I speak with Latino immigrants who come into contact with ICE as a result of being arrested for minor traffic violations that go unprosecuted,” she said.

“There may not be an offical policy of arresting Latinos,” she said, “but what seems to be happening is that disproportionate numbers of Latinos are stopped by police, resulting in their transfer to ICE.” Lopez heads a program, which works with detainees during their appearances before the San Francisco Immigration Court, to provide legal information, referrals, and representation to detained immigrants.

The four groups called on the government to make specific changes to immigration enforcement practices that they said would make the system more fair. They called for a moratorium on transferring detained immigrants out of state, where they would have less access to legal or family help. They called for better detention conditions and for giving immigrants more opportunities to call a lawyer or their family for help. And they called for faster determinations of claims of American citizenship, to prevent citizens from languishing in immigration jails for months.

The National Week of Action is a joint effort, organized by the Washington, D.C. based Rights Working Group, to demand governmental oversight and meaningful reform to protect immigrant communities’ due process and human rights. Fundamental immigration reform is needed to ensure that the immigration authorities are held accountable to enforcing our immigration laws in a sensible and fair manner. For more information please visit www.rightsworkinggroup.org.

Contacts:
Angie Junck Immigrant Legal Resource Center,(415) 255-9499, ext. 586
Cassandra Lopez Centro Legal de la Raza, (510) 437-1554, ext. 117
Raha Jorjani UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic, (530) 754-5892
Theodore Roethke Asian Law Caucus, (415) 848-7726

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