A Trump order halted lawyers’ ability to meet with people detained by ICE at a Tacoma center and elsewhere. This violates the First Amendment, the suit asserts.
A Trump order halted lawyers’ ability to meet with people detained by ICE at a Tacoma center and elsewhere. This violates the First Amendment, the suit asserts.
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project is one of 10 advocacy organizations that filed a lawsuit Friday against the U.S. government for shutting down four programs aimed at providing legal help for noncitizens, including people arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
The 40-year-old Washington not-for-profit organization, which has offices in Seattle, Tacoma, Wenatchee and Granger, Yakima County, provides educational and pro bono services to immigrants, including “know your rights” group presentations to people detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, a private prison operated by the Geo Group.
Until last week, the organization’s attorneys and advocates provided regular legal rights presentations to groups of 15 to 45 detainees, received daily rosters of new arrivals and biweekly court dockets of cases set to go before immigration judges, and had three consultation rooms permanently reserved several afternoons a week for one-on-one intake interviews and case consultations, said Vanessa Gutierrez, a NWIRP deputy director.
That all changed Jan. 22, two days after President Donald Trump took office and issued an executive order titled “Protecting the American People from Invasion.” The order directed the attorney general and secretary of Homeland Security to immediately review and audit all federally funded contracts and grants to nonprofits providing services to “removable or illegal aliens.” The reported purpose was to ensure the agreements are free of waste, fraud and abuse and don’t promote violations of immigration law.
A “stop work” order immediately halted funding, brought group presentations to an end, cut off or restricted pro bono attorney access to detained people and saw the removal of informational posters — measures the lawsuit alleges are arbitrary and capricious and violate the federal Administrative Procedure Act and First Amendment.
The advocacy groups are no longer receiving rosters of detainees or court dockets, so they don’t know how many people are in detention or when their hearings are scheduled.
The Department of Justice contracts with the Acacia Center for Justice in Washington, D.C., which in turn subcontracts with groups like the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project to provide the legal orientation programs inside detention centers.
The lawsuit’s plaintiffs are seeking a temporary restraining order and should know next week when the first hearing will be held, Gutierrez said. They are asking that a judge order the government to restore funding, permit access to courts and detention centers, allow distribution of written materials and to replace any informational posters that have been removed.
The government has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in D.C. It is the second time a Trump administration has sought to end the programs.
The government’s action is “a hasty and pretextual attack on the immigration system and on noncitizens to deprive them of the information they need to secure the due process guaranteed to them under the Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the lawsuit says.
Since the legal orientation program’s inception in 2003, Congress has uncontroversially and consistently increased funding and encouraged expansion of legal orientation programs, appropriating $28 million for services in 35 detention centers last year, according to the lawsuit. The programs have a track record of saving court time and money, increasing efficiency of immigration proceedings and reducing costs associated with immigrant detention, the lawsuit says. They’ve also led to “smoother interactions” with ICE officers, reducing confusion for noncitizens and leading to fewer inquiries for officers to handle, it says.
While immigrants have a right to legal representation in immigration court, the government is not required to pay for it, unlike when someone is charged with a crime. While immigrant rights groups employ attorneys and solicit help from a network of pro bono lawyers to represent some clients, nearly 80% of people involved in immigration proceedings appear pro se, meaning they represent themselves.
The legal orientation programs allow immigrants to better weigh their options and the merits of their cases to decide whether to continue to fight to stay in the country or voluntarily agree to deportation.
The lawsuit argues the president and executive branch don’t have the authority to withhold funding that has already been appropriated and that the organizations that provide legal services will be forced to attempt to fill funding gaps, cut staff or close up shop altogether, irreparably harming them.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review issued the stop work order for the legal orientation programs “without any explanation as to the reasons for the stop, the duration of the stop or whether the stop is intended to be temporary,” the lawsuit says. Further, Congress has repeatedly warned the office and Department of Justice not to stop the funding, it says.
The move will increase the number of people who will be forced to navigate the complex immigration system without ever speaking to a lawyer about the immigration process, their obligations or the legal remedies available to them, the lawsuit says.
It is also expected to force judges to spend more time explaining removal proceedings to ensure people understand what is happening in their cases and increase the number of appeals and motions to reopen cases, according to the lawsuit.
There’s also concern that by restricting attorneys’ access to detention centers, there will be fewer eyes to ensure the government is acting fairly and lawfully, the lawsuit says.
At a time when there are already 3.6 million cases pending — the largest backlog in immigration court history — advocates expect daily populations in detention centers to increase dramatically as ICE is instructed to step up enforcement actions and place people in detention for removal proceedings, according to the lawsuit.
Last year, ICE officers made 113,431 arrests nationwide and removed 271,484 noncitizens from the country, according to the lawsuit, while the daily population of people in detention centers across the country consistently exceeds more than 37,000 individuals.
According to the NWIRP, before the “stop work” order, there were 800 to 1,000 people housed at the detention center in Tacoma.
In 2018, the legal orientation programs were also targeted for elimination by the Trump administration, with then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions abruptly stopping funding, purportedly to audit the program. Sessions quickly reversed course after he received notice of a legal challenge to the stop and that providers of legal orientation programs were planning to seek injunctive relief to keep the funding.