Immigration Article of the Day: The Right to Be Heard from Immigration Prisons: Locating a Right of Access to Counsel for Immigration Detainees in the Right of Access to Courts

The Right to Be Heard from Immigration Prisons: Locating a Right of Access to Counsel for Immigration Detainees in the Right of Access to Courts 
By the Harvard Law Review

Remote facilities, inadequate visiting rooms, and restricted phone calls create increasingly insurmountable barriers for immigration detainees trying to contact their lawyers. The constitutional right of access to courts provides a path to relief: When the government locks someone up, it cannot also block avenues for challenging that detention. This Note first outlines how immigration detainees can use the right to remove obstructions to contacting counsel. Through their unique circumstances, often both fighting deportation and opposing detention, immigration detainees are also exempt from some of the limits of the modern access-to-courts doctrine and ultimately may be able to use it to vindicate a variety of rights to adequately pursue their cases.

KJ