FILE - Barbed wire fencing is shown behind a sign in English and Spanish in a recreation yard used by detainees during a media tour of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, Dec. 16, 2019, in Tacoma, Wash. People detained in this facility receive legal advice from the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, one of the advocacy groups currently suing the Trump administration for blocking legal access for detained undocumented immigrants.
Ted S. Warren / AP
UPDATE: Two days after the lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice resumed funding for immigration attorneys' programs at detention centers, according to a Feb. 2 email sent by DOJ’s procurement services staff.
An immigration advocacy group in Washington state has joined a federal lawsuit to block the Trump administration from restricting legal help for people facing deportation.
Last week, the Trump administration issued a directive to audit federal spending on immigration assistance, including at an immigration detention center near Seattle that holds people arrested in Oregon and across the Northwest.
Nine groups, including the Seattle-based Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, say federal officials have since issued a stop-work order on a program that gives detainees legal advice in a group setting.
In a court filing Friday, the groups asked a United States district judge in Washington D.C. to halt the stop-work order at least temporarily. They argue the order violates detainees’ legal due process.
Officials with Northwest Immigrant Rights Project told OPB they are no longer getting daily rosters of detainees from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, a detention facility operated on behalf of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and have been barred from giving legal advice in group sessions. They say both measures hamper the organization’s ability to represent people facing deportation.
“We immediately started getting calls from clients that we’re working with, already, that said, ‘Oh, we were told that the free attorneys aren’t going to be coming anymore,’” said Vanessa Gutierrez, deputy director of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
“It’s not just people who are undocumented,” Gutierrez added. “We’re talking about lawful permanent residents that are facing deportation.”
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The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project is a federal contractor who is paid to offer legal orientations to groups of detainees at the Northwest ICE Processing Center. The center has more than 1,500 beds and is currently housing between 800 and 1,000 individuals, court filings said.
The GEO Group, which runs the Tacoma facility on behalf of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, referred all questions about the stop-work order and the lawsuit to the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FILE - In this photo taken Sept. 10, 2019, a guard with the GEO Group sits at a desk in a housing area at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Tacoma, Wash. during a media tour. The contractor refers all questions about the lawsuit against the federal government to the Department of Justice, which doesn't immediately respond to requests for comments.
Ted S. Warren / AP
Immigration attorneys play a significant role in deportation cases, especially for those who are in custody.
According to a 2015 article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, detainees in custody who were represented by an immigration attorney were 10.5 times more likely to win their cases, compared to detainees who did not have lawyers and represented themselves.
Stephen Manning, who runs the Portland-based Innovation Law Lab, has said that removing access to lawyers would be a key step towards mass deportations.
“Mass deportation is not that hard to accomplish very unfortunately,” Manning told OPB in November. “Getting mass deportations you need three things: pathways of stigmatization, the apparatus of mass incarceration, and you have to eliminate courts and lawyers. Those three things. You can depopulate the city of Portland. You can depopulate Miami. It is totally possible, but you’ve got to have all three things.”
Related: How Trump’s immigration policies could impact Oregon
President Donald Trump on Jan. 22 signed the executive order calling for a financial audit of federal dollars related to immigration programs. That day, Gutierrez said her organization received notice to stop legal advice in group classes immediately.
Gutierrez said the organization’s attorneys are still able to meet detainees for legal advice, but newer people sent to the center will have less opportunities to meet with lawyers.
That, she said, could mean more individuals heading into court without legal counsel.
“A lot of people are just going to go into court with no guidance, no information about what they might be eligible for,” Gutierrez said.
Other groups involved in the case include American Gateways in Austin, Texas; Amica Center for Immigrant Rights in Washington D.C.,; Estrella del Paso in Texas; and others.
Part of their legal case to the federal judge argues that the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal officials are overreaching. The federal program administering the nonprofits’ contract is funded by Congress.
