DOJ Halts A Legal Lifeline For Immigrants In Detention

By Liz Jones April 16, 2018

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Every day at detention centers around the country, lawyers give ‘know your rights’ presentations to immigrants facing deportation. For many, it’s the only legal help they’ll get. And the feds just pulled the money for it.

Dozens of detainees are packed into a windowless room at the NW Detention Center in Tacoma. Their 1-hour presentation goes by fast.

What happens in court? What does the judge do? How do you get a bond?
These are the basics.

Since 2003, the Department of Justice has funded these brief workshops. Partly, to help make the court process more efficient.

Now, DOJ plans to suspend the program at the end of April.

Matt Adams is with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. The nonprofit has led these workshops in Tacoma. And Adams said it’ll be tough to continue without the federal support.

“It’s going to be very difficult. I mean, what we see here is again the Department of Justice attacking any program that provide any type of support to people who are being placed into removal proceedings” Adams said.

Adams said his staff reached about 3-thousand detainees a year through this program.
DOJ officials said they want to review the program’s effectiveness. Even though the department’s own analysis in 2012 found the program saves millions every year in detention and court costs.

Adams said his staff aims to keep the workshops going. But without DOJ’s stamp of approval, he expects a lot of obstacles ahead.