Tag: Matt Stiles

GOOD GUYS WIN ANOTHER: Modest Victory For Detainees & Their Lawyers On Phone Access

Matt Stiles
Matt Stiles
Reporter
LA Times

https://apple.news/AU4CWvbekQAGnqeQfwOuD9A

Matt Stiles reports for the LA Times:

A federal judge ruled Saturday that immigration enforcement officials must allow confidential telephone calls between detainees at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and their attorneys in light of the coronavirus outbreak. 

The 15-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must reverse a policy that critics said made it virtually impossible for detainees and their attorneys to confer in private at the facility, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County.

Bernal wrote that the agency must provide “free, reasonably private legal calls on unrecorded and unmonitored telephone lines, and must devise a reliable procedure for attorneys as well as detainees to schedule those calls within 24 hours of a request.”

The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and others sought a temporary restraining order late last month, noting the risks posed by in-person visitation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Attorneys for the detainees, which included the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School and the law firm Sidley Austin, hailed the ruling for opening other methods for them to communicate with the outside world during the pandemic. 

“This order will protect detained immigrants’ constitutional right to speak with their lawyers — enabling them to fight deportation and regain their freedom,” Eva Bitrán, staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement.

. . . .

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“Nibbling around the edges” of the real problem we’re not addressing: far too much unnecessary, and now dangerous, so-called “civil” immigration detention.

Trump’s “New American Gulag” is a stain on our nation. Phone access is good, but doesn’t address the reality that most of the individuals in the Gulag shouldn’t be there at all.

And, one might well ask why this is an issue at all. Why are officials acting with impunity to deny basic constitutional rights? Why are lawyers required to sue for basics that should be provided in any detention system?

I actually remember a time in the past where every finding by a Federal Court that an Immigration Judge had violated an individual’s legal rights automatically generated a review by the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility and sometimes disciplinary action. Why are Trump law enforcement officials immune from ethical and professional responsibilities and never held accountable (except, apparently, where they follow the law rather than Trump’s whims and desires)?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-11-20

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