ACLU FILES EMERGENCY LAWSUIT TO GIVE DETAINED IMMIGRANTS IN OREGON ACCESS TO LAWYERS

https://aclu-or.org/en/press-releases/aclu-files-emergency-lawsuit-give-detained-immigrants-oregon-access-lawyers

Government Refusal to Allow Attorneys to Advise Detainees is Unconstitutional

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The Trump administration is incarcerating over a hundred civil immigration detainees at a federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon. Since early June, the detainees have been held in near complete isolation and have been denied access to attorneys, prevented from communicating with their families, and held in cells for up to 23 hours per day. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) have prevented the detained men from seeing or calling pro bono lawyers who wanted to give them legal advice on handling their immigration cases. Many of those held include individuals subject to the administration's "zero-tolerance" policies, under which they were forcibly separated from their families, including their children.

Early this morning, the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Oregon filed an emergency lawsuit to put an immediate end to the unconstitutional denial of attorney access to the detainees housed in the Sheridan prison. The emergency lawsuit asks that officials be forced to drop all actions that prevent attorneys from visiting or communicating with immigration detainees at the Sheridan prison.

These actions preventing attorney-client meetings by ICE and BOP officials violate the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedures Act, and the Immigration, Nationality Act, and federal detention standards.

“Incarcerating immigrants in a federal prison is a highly unusual move and unprecedented for Oregon,” said Mat dos Santos, legal director at the ACLU of Oregon. “Denying these men access to counsel--at a time that they need it most to prepare for interviews with immigration officials or appearing before an immigration judge--is as outrageous as it is unconstitutional. For an asylum seeker, this could mean the difference between life and death.”

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