A federal judge on Friday ruled that the government is \u201cpartially blocking access to lawyers\u201d for immigrant detainees held in a downtown Los Angeles processing center and ordered it to stop.<\/p>\n
The preliminary injunction essentially extends a temporary restraining order that U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued in July<\/a>, requiring federal immigration agencies to allow legal visitation at the B-18 detention facility in downtown L.A. seven days a week.<\/p>\n In her ruling this week, Frimpong said that lawyer visiting hours at B-18, which is in the basement of a federal building, have been closed down repeatedly without letting lawyers know, despite her ordering the government to notify them.<\/p>\n \u201cOfficers insist on keeping the door open when lawyers are trying to have private conversations with their clients \u2014 even though this means the conversations are no longer private,\u201d Frimpong said. \u201cOfficers sometimes will not let lawyers meet with people who want to work with lawyers \u2014 even though they are not supposed to. Individuals in B-18 do not get the free, confidential phone calls with their lawyers that even the government says they should have. And sometimes, individuals are moved from B-18 to another location which does not allow lawyer visits at all.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd, once again, the Court is ordering the federal government to stop \u2014 this time for the rest of this lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n Mark Rosenbaum, of Public Counsel, which helped bring the lawsuit, said that the court has \u201caffirmed that the Constitution does not stop at the doors of a detention center.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a terribly important ruling, not just because it enjoins the denial of access to lawyers, but because it takes apart a key part of ICE\u2019s strategy in Los Angeles and that has been to dehumanize Latinos and to do everything they can to assure that Latinos that are subject to these raids are not able to avail themselves of their basic rights, not be able to disclose to lawyers the racial profiling that is going forward and not be able to establish their dignity and their basic rights to due process,\u201d Rosenbaum said. <\/p>\n Frimpong ordered that legal visitation be permitted seven days per week, for a minimum of eight hours per day on business days and a minimum of four hours per day on weekends and holidays. She also ordered the government to \u201cprovide private rooms for closed-door discussions between detainees and current and prospective attorneys, legal representatives, and legal assistants.\u201d <\/p>\n Detainees will be provided with access to confidential telephone calls with legal team members and those calls \u201cshall not be screened, recorded, or otherwise monitored,\u201d Frimpong wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cNo lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States,\u201d Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. \u201cAll detainees are provided ample opportunity to communicate with their attorneys and family members. Every single detainee receives due process.\u201d<\/p>\n At a hearing last month<\/a>, government attorney Jonathan Ross argued that \u201cevidence shows detainees at B-18 are meeting with attorneys, they have access to counsel.\u201d He also said that exigent circumstances \u2014 protests that sprang up against immigration raids \u2014 shifted conditions at the facility, thus impacting clients\u2019 access to attorneys.<\/p>\n \u201cThat circumstance has now changed and conditions at B-18 have now normalized,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cthe government is going to do the right thing\u201d regardless of any order.<\/p>\n \u201cThe court should not be ordering the government to do what it already is,\u201d Ross said, adding that detainees \u201care receiving what the 5th Amendment requires.\u201d<\/p>\n The government had requested a stay of the injunction pending appeal, which Frimpong denied.<\/p>\n The American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of several immigrant rights groups, three immigrants picked up at a bus stop and two U.S. citizens, one of whom was held despite showing agents his identification.<\/p>\n Along with access issues, plaintiffs also argued in their complaint that<\/a> immigration agents cornered brown-skinned people in Home Depot parking lots, at carwashes and at bus stops across Southern California in a show of force without establishing reasonable suspicion that they had violated immigration laws. They allege agents didn\u2019t identify themselves, as required under federal law, and made unlawful warrantless arrests.<\/p>\n