Immigrants’ Rights Clinic Advocacy: Assisting Detainees Without Access to Confidential Attorney Communications
The Immigrants’ Rights Clinic became involved in advocacy efforts to ensure attorney access to detainees in Southern California because of the experience of an IRC client “R”, who was transferred to a Southern California detention facility in 2018. The IRC completely lost contact with “R” after the transfer. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would not even reveal where “R” was detained, much less how to contact him by phone. Once IRC students were able to locate the client, DHS and the detention facility refused to arrange for telephone calls. Our client “R” tried to contact us but he was not able to do so because he could not afford the expense of the call. Even if he had been able to call, the call would have been recorded and monitored. The clinic students were ultimately required to fly down to the facility just to make contact with the client. The IRC learned that many detainees in Southern California faced the same challenges as our client “R.”
Students conducted complex legal research to identify potential legal challenges to the barriers to communication. Through their research, the students developed claims to challenge the detention practices that deny immigrant detainees and advocates the opportunity to meaningfully communicate with each other.
Timeline of Events
2018
Winter 2018
Students partnered with attorneys from the ACLU of Southern California and the law firm Sidley Austin to investigate the practices that prevented our client from communicating with us. IRC students traveled to Southern California and met with dozens of immigration advocates and detained noncitizens to learn about the challenges that detainees and advocates experienced when trying to communicate with one another. Through their investigation, IRC students discovered that the barriers to accessing counsel were widespread. Detained immigrants in Southern California were being systematically denied the opportunity to be represented by counsel while facing deportation from the United States because of restrictive policies that denied detainees the opportunity to make affordable, unmonitored, and unrecorded telephone calls to attorneys for more than a few minutes at a time.
Winter 2018
Students Katie Guthrie, ’19, and Joshua Walden, ’19, traveled to Adelanto Detention Center with their supervisor, Jen Stark, to meet with detainees and learn about the challenges they experienced accesing communication with legal advocates.
Spring 2018
Students Gracie Chung, ’19, and Annie Shi, ’19, visit detainees and conduct intakes at Theo Lacy Detention Facility in Orange, CA.
Students returned to Southern California to identify individuals and organizations interested in serving as named plaintiffs and fact witnesses in a class action lawsuit challenging the barriers to communication erected by detention facilities across Southern California.
Spring 2018
Students Patrick Kennedy, ’19, Beth Braiterman, ’19, Eunice Kim, ’19, and Jon Collier, ’19 visit detainees at Adelanto Detention Facility in Adelanto, CA.
Fall 2018
IRC students drafted and filed a federal class action lawsuit against the federal government and the GEO Group, a for-profit private detention company. The 100-page complaint detailed the systemic failure of Southern California’s detention centers to provide meaningful access to counsel and alleged that the policies and practices enacted by the federal government and the GEO Group violated the constitutional and statutory rights afforded to noncitizens in detention.
2019
Spring 2019
In response to a motion to dismiss from the GEO Group and federal immigration agencies, IRC students researched, drafted, and filed oppositions to the motions to dismiss. The oppositions detailed the legal and factual deficiencies in the defendants’ motions to dismiss and persuasively argued for the need for continued litigation.
Fall 2019
While the motions to dismiss remained pending, a team of IRC students prepared a motion for class certification. The students conducted complex research on the requirements for class certification and worked closely with detained noncitizens and immigration advocates to develop written evidence supporting the motion for class certification.
In October 2019, the district court dismissed entirely the federal government’s motion to dismiss and denied in part the Geo Group’s motion to dismiss. In a landmark ruling, the court affirmed the legal arguments that students developed and articulated in the initial complaint and the Opposition to the Motion to Dismiss. The court relied heavily on the factual record and frequently cited declarations from immigrant detainees and immigration attorneys that IRC students helped develop.
2020
Spring 2020
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the detention facilities all but eliminated communication between detainees and their attorneys. Over the course of just two weeks, an IRC student talked to a half-dozen immigration advocates to understand rapidly evolving facts on the ground and to develop the evidentiary record in support of a request for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO). The clinic and co-counsel filed a TRO to demand that the federal government and the GEO Group stop eliminating in-person visitation without providing a telephonic alternative.
Spring 2020
Student Derin McLeod, ’20, conducted phone interviews with detainees in early 2020 and assisted with drafting the request for a Temporary Restraining Order.
Spring 2020
On Apri 11, 2020, the district court granted the TRO and ordered the federal government and the GEO Group to “create, implement, and advertise a process by which both attorneys and Adelanto detainees may initiate a request for free confidential telephone calls.” The court’s order was the first of its kind and served as a model for similar orders around the country.
2021
Spring 2021
Anita Desai, ’22, Sandra Allen Kang, ’22, Miye D’Oench, ’22, and Andrew Toney Noland, ’22 conducted interviews and drafted a policy recommendations memo.
Building off the success of the TRO, students conducted a comprehensive survey of federal litigation challenging restrictions on attorney-client communication at immigration detention centers across the country. The students conducted qualitative interviews with immigration advocates, federal litigators, criminal defenders, and immigrants impacted by restrictions on communication. Through their interviews, the students identified the best practices in protecting the due process rights of detained noncitizens as well as opportunities to further expand and protect access to counsel. The students then developed a series of policy recommendations to be adopted by the federal government to better protect the right of detained noncitizens to access and communicate with counsel. The memo was shared with immigration advocates and served as a launch pad for a national advocacy effort urging the Biden administration to enact the very policies developed by the students.