Ensuring Meaningful Access to Legal Representation in Immigration Detention

The American Immigration Council, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and nearly 90 legal service provider organizations urged DHS and ICE to ensure adequate access to attorneys in immigration detention centers and a meaningful opportunity for people to represent themselves.  In a letter, the organizations highlighted the barriers people in detention face in accessing legal representation and provided recommendations to remove these obstacles.  

For details, see Council Advocates for Meaningful Access to Legal Representation in Immigration Detention.

The first paragraph of the letter reads as follows:

“The Biden administration has made access to legal representation and access to justice a priority.  Despite this commitment, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) maintains a network of immigration detention facilities where people are routinely denied access to counsel and are prevented from effectively representing themselves. The undersigned write to highlight the host of obstacles to attorney access that exist in immigration detention facilities nationwide and make recommendations to remove these obstacles. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) and National Detention Standards (NDS) provide inadequate protections for attorney access, and ICE has failed to abide by or monitor compliance with even these inadequate standards, creating this crisis.  This is a national problem that must be resolved with a strong, coherent, and consistent response from DHS and ICE Headquarters.”

The letter concludes with recommendations on improving detainees’ access to counsel.

KJ