Is CCA Preventing Immigrants in Detention From Speaking to Their Lawyers?

Rhonda Brownstein, Legal Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, writes in a column in the Huffington Post that immigrant detainees at the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, GA, are being denied their right to speak with their lawyers. The Stewart facility is owned by the Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit prison company.  Brownstein writes: 

“Anybody who is detained has the right to confer with a lawyer. But for years, CCA guards have prevented attorneys from meeting with detainees by creating unreasonable delays. Even when a lawyer succeeds in setting up a meeting with a detainee, he or she must speak to the client via phone through a Plexiglass barrier – and the phones are often broken, leaving the lawyer to yell his advice through the Plexiglass. A number of lawyers have stopped practicing at the detention center, citing inconsistent practices involving attorney-client meetings and harassment by facility staffers.”

According to the column, CCA has also failed to fulfill the terms of a contract that required it to provide video teleconferencing services for detainees to speak with their lawyers, among other things. 

More information about these concerns are available on the SPLC website here, and include a letter sent to ICE officials last March regarding immigrant detainees’ access to counsel.  

The allegations are deeply troubling, and exacerbated by the fact that noncitizens have no right to government-appointed counsel in the immigration context.

-JKoh