Immigrants in Detention Centers Are Often Hundreds of Miles From Legal Help

| for ProPublica

Immigration detention centers are often miles away from the nearest city, limiting a detainee's access to legal counsel, family, and access to evidence. In article published by ProPublica, Immigrants in Detention Centers Are Often Hundreds of Miles From Legal Help, author Patrick G. Lee highlights the challenges that we at CAIR Coalition encounter when providing free legal services to men and women detained in remote detention centers.

Saba Ahmed, a staff lawyer at the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition in Washington, D.C., said a detainee she recently advised, a middle-aged man with a green card, was scooped up and sent to a Maryland detention facility in March because ICE agents wrongly believed he was a convicted robber — making him eligible for deportation.

When Ahmed met the man during a visit to the detention center about two weeks later, she realized that the government had meant to pick up someone else with the same name, and she helped secure his release.

“He didn’t have access to do an online search to prove it wasn’t him,” Ahmed said. “All he could say was, ‘It’s not me.’ You can’t just go on Google. You don’t have smartphones. There’s really no access.”

 

Ahmed, who has been working with detainees for 2 1/2 years, said some immigrants don’t realize that their life circumstances may qualify them for legal relief.

One man from El Salvador, she said, initially told her that he’d fled to the United States after gang members threatened to kill him if he didn’t give them money. After a few meetings, the man revealed he’d been thrown out of his family’s home because he was gay and had been repeatedly sexually abused by gang members.

“This is someone who had been persecuted and feared for his life, and would not have been able to avail himself of asylum if someone had not explained, ‘This is how asylum works,’ and then represented him,” Ahmed said.

After about five months in detention, she said, the man won his asylum case last October.

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