Justice for Immigration’s Hidden Population

Texas Appleseed, with pro bono counsel Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, today released its report, Justice for Immigration’s Hidden Population (Download 1269915942_Immigration Detains Booklet_ONLINE_REV[1]), and urged major changes within the nation’s immigration court and detention system to ensure fair treatment and due process for immigrants with mental disabilities.

About a quarter of all immigrants apprehended annually in the U.S. are sent to detention facilities in Texas, “but the problems we uncovered are not unique to Texas,” said Texas Appleseed Executive Director Rebecca Lightsey. Steven Schulman, Akin Gump’s firm-wide Pro Bono Partner, said, “Immigrants with mental disabilities are detained in a system ill-equipped to care for them and often arbitrarily transferred away from their communities, denied basic due process in a complex immigration court system, and released from detention or removed from the U.S. with little concern for their safety and well-being.” “There is precedent under the law to extend special legal protections to vulnerable populations, and such special protections should be extended to persons with mental disabilities in the immigration court and detention system,” he said.

Other major Texas Appleseed recommendations include:

 Immigrants with mental disabilities should be placed in the least restrictive setting — and allowed to continue receiving mental health services in the community or in a hospital while their immigration cases are adjudicated.

 Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) should improve and establish consistent procedures for screening and diagnosing mental disabilities, improve mental health care in detention, and provide timely access to medical records. “When immigrant detainees do not receive timely or appropriate medication, many decompensate to the point that they cannot comprehend their situation or participate meaningfully in deportation proceedings,” said Texas Appleseed Senior Policy Analyst Ann Baddour.

 Over 80 percent of detained immigrants have no attorney, and currently there is no process for establishing competency in immigration court. The U.S. Department of Justice should adopt consistent procedures for recognizing immigrants with mental disabilities and adopt standards to accommodate these disabilities in immigration courts, including standards for appointing counsel.

 ICE should develop and follow clear procedures to ensure safe domestic release or repatriation of immigrants with mental disabilities. (In one case cited in the report, the parents have not been able to find their son with mental disabilities two years after his release from detention.)

The report, available at www.texasappleseed.net (see Home Page: In the Spotlight), is based on a year-long review of the immigration court and detention system in Texas. It follows on national Appleseed study, Assembly Line Injustice: Blueprint to Reform America’s Immigration Courts.

KJ