A federal judge on Friday ruled that the government is “partially blocking access to lawyers” for immigrant detainees held in a downtown Los Angeles processing center and ordered it to stop.
The preliminary injunction essentially extends a temporary restraining order that U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued in July, requiring federal immigration agencies to allow legal visitation at the B-18 detention facility in downtown L.A. seven days a week.
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.
“Officers insist on keeping the door open when lawyers are trying to have private conversations with their clients—even though this means the conversations are no longer private,” Frimpong said. “Officers sometimes will not let lawyers meet with people who want to work with lawyers—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.”
“And, once again, the Court is ordering the federal government to stop—this time for the rest of this lawsuit.”
Mark Rosenbaum, of Public Counsel, which helped bring the lawsuit, said that the court has “affirmed that the Constitution does not stop at the doors of a detention center.”
“This 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’s 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,” Rosenbaum said.
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 “provide private rooms for closed-door discussions between detainees and current and prospective attorneys, legal representatives, and legal assistants.”
Detainees will be provided with access to confidential telephone calls with legal team members and those calls “shall not be screened, recorded, or otherwise monitored,” Frimpong wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a hearing last month, government attorney Jonathan Ross argued that “evidence shows detainees at B-18 are meeting with attorneys, they have access to counsel.” He also said that exigent circumstances — protests that sprang up against immigration raids — shifted conditions at the facility, thus impacting clients’ access to attorneys.
“That circumstance has now changed and conditions at B-18 have now normalized,” he said, adding that “the government is going to do the right thing” regardless of any order.
“The court should not be ordering the government to do what it already is,” Ross said, adding that detainees “are receiving what the Fifth Amendment requires.”
The government had requested a stay of the injunction pending appeal, which Frimpong denied.
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.
Along with access issues, plaintiffs also argued in their complaint that 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’t identify themselves, as required under federal law, and made unlawful warrantless arrests.
Frimpong previously issued a ruling in the same case temporarily blocking federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests. The Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal and lifted that order.
Last month, Frimpong approved expedited discovery on the claim that the aggressive raids violate a person’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. The government will have to produce documents and witnesses for deposition relating to around 15 raids, in addition to general operational information.
“I think there is some sense out there that with the Supreme Court’s granting of the stay that this put this case to bed,” Rosenbaum said. “This case is alive and kicking and the racial profiling and other illegal attacks on the Latino community and the community at large, we’re going to put them to an end.”
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