The Department of Justice ordered federally-funded legal orientation programs (LOP) to stop providing legal education services to detained immigrants.
In a press call on Monday, lawyers from three of the affected legal access groups denounced the move, sharing how they were shut out of detention centers on Friday.
“(The Amica Center for Immigrant Rights) was there; they were helping,” Michael Lukens, Executive Director for the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said. “The facility told us we had to leave because of an ICE directive that we would no longer be able to provide this type of orientation service.”
The pause includes the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP) based in Arizona, which provides basic legal education to adult immigrants to educate them about the legal process.
Laura St. John, the legal director for FIRRP, says this type of assistance is the bare minimum.
“How can you expect someone to fight their own case in an extremely traumatizing situation with no understanding of the process and due to the conditions of their detention have no access to the information that's necessary to prove their case?” St. John said. “That's not justice.”
Since the pause, St. John says the Florence Project has received calls from concerned immigrants in detention centers detailing how posters explaining possible relief avenues from the organization have been removed from facilities. Without legal orientation programs, thousands of people detained in Arizona will be forced to represent themselves in immigration court with little to no information about their options, advocates say.
“No one should be locked away facing a really complicated legal matter without even basic information of what's happening to them when their life and their family and everything is on the line,” St. John said. “But that is exactly what will happen without the LOP. Thousands of people…will have no choice but to face the full force of the United States government with no information or resources at all.”
The organizations called the move a violation of due process rights. Amica, along with others, are already considering legal measures to push back on the pause, but have not filed anything yet.
Abdoulaziz Djibril, a former legal orientation program participant and Amica Center for Immigrant Rights Board Member, recalled his asylum journey to the United States. He was detained in Farmville, Virginia, and called it the “toughest moment of (his) whole life.”
“I was completely diminished, lost, and hopeless,” Djibril said. “Officers handed me a yellow jumpsuit, and to be honest with you, when I saw the yellow jumpsuit, that's where, literally, my brain shut off.”
When it came time to process and argue his asylum case, resources were limited.
“How do you want me to fight a case if I'm detained, if I don't have access to my own property if I don't have access to the internet, if I don't have access to a decent library?”
Djibril attributes his winning asylum to the organization that provided legal education to him. He is now a permanent resident enrolled in law school. For him, this type of access brought “light” to his life.
The organizations do not know how long the pause will last
“We're going to see detention go up,” Lukens said. “This administration has made it very clear that it wants to mass deport as many people as possible. Well, mass deportation starts with mass detention.”
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