Trump Seeks to Curtail Protections for Detainees

Over the past 15 years, officials at all immigration detention facilities, including those operated by private prison companies, have been required to abide by a number of rules designed to protect detainees and ensure some basic rights. For instance, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities currently must notify immigration officials if an immigrant detainee spends more than two weeks in solitary confinement. Detention facilities must provide information to detainees about available medical care in their own languages and offer an English-speaking individual to advocate on a detainee’s behalf in disciplinary proceedings. The Trump administration, however, is taking immediate steps toward removing these and other rules that exist specifically to protect the rights of immigrant detainees. The administration is closing ICE’s Office of Detention Policy and the Planning, which is the office that formerly developed and promulgated these rules and regulations. Perhaps in hopes of encouraging more local sheriffs to enter into housing contracts with immigration officials and making the immigration detention center business more attractive for private prison companies, new jail contracts will contain far fewer and less detailed regulations for facility administrators to follow. For instance, instead of requiring that a detainee’s request for medical care be evaluated by a professional within 24 hours, jails need only have procedures to provide medical care to detainees as needed, which obviously is a much less strenuous requirement. In most respects, immigrant detainees now will be subject to the same rules as incarcerated criminal defendants. Nonetheless, criminal defendants enjoy constitutional rights that immigrant detainees do not; whereas those accused of crimes have a right to legal counsel, for example, immigrant detainees have no such right. Landerholm Immigration, A.P.C., has the experience that you need when you are facing deportation charges. We know how to gather the facts that are relevant to your case, assess your options, and determine whether you have any legal defenses that may enable you to avoid deportation and remain in the U.S. Contact the Oakland immigration attorneys at our office today and learn how we potentially can help you and your family through this difficult situation.