RAICES
WOMEN’S DETENTION REPORT 2021
“Visitors are not required to file a Form G-28 to participate in a consultation visit or provide consultation during an Asylum staff interview or immigration judge’s review of a negative credible fear determination. This applies even if the visitor is an attorney or legal representative.”47 Yet, in April of 2019, GEO began to ask RAICES to present a G-28 in order to meet with any detained person. This requirement was endorsed by the ICE AFOD in charge of operations at Karnes at the time. As RAICES offers both pro bono and pro se assistance at Karnes, RAICES legal representatives do not always enter an appearance for people who receive services. Moreover, detained people have the right to consult with prospective legal service providers, and a requirement that any legal professional must submit an appearance on behalf of someone who has not yet received a consultation impinges upon that right. The unnecessary G-28 requirement also resulted in interference with attorney client relationships and undue delay in legal meetings. It is not uncommon for families of detained persons to contact an attorney and ask the attorney to meet with their detained family member, sometimes without having had the opportunity to communicate the arrangement to the detained individual. At times, the family seeks attorney assistance to locate their detained loved one, or their family member may not have regular access to a phone to communicate with family. Multiple times, the G-28 requirement of 2019 resulted in both a privately contracted attorney and a RAICES attorney having a G-28 on file for the same individual. The ICE AFOD
informed RAICES that she would call these private attorneys and ask for their consent for RAICES to meet with the individual. This practice was antithetical to the basic principle that an individual has the right to meet with a legal representative of their own choosing. The G-28 requirement is a stark illustration of the impact that the unchecked power of ICE has on daily operations and on detained persons’ access to legal representation. Clearly, the G-28 requirement has no basis in ICE’s own standards and plainly contravenes the language of the standards. Yet, the ICE officer in charge at Karnes wielded her authority to implement this onerous requirement.
DE FACTO PRIVATE AT TORNEY PRIVIL EGE Neither the FRS (2007) nor the PBNDS (2011) make any distinction between private attorneys and other legal representatives. The only two times that the term “private attorney” appears in the PBNDS is as part of the term “private attorneys and other legal representatives.”48 The term does not appear at all in the legal visitation section of the 2007 FRS.49 Nevertheless, following the population change, GEO began to privilege private attorneys over the RAICES team in implementation of often-changing and arbitrary rules. The following anecdotes are just a portion of the ways in which GEO disadvantaged RAICES clients compared to private attorney clients, especially in terms of language access50 for non-Spanish speaking clients in need of private rooms to connect with interpreters via phone. The preference for private attorneys had the
47. (Section v, subpoint 11.g, pg. 12) 48. https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention-standards/2011/pbnds2011r2016.pdf pg. 360, pg. 474 49. https://www.ice.gov/doclib/dro/family-residential/pdf/rs_visitation.pdf 50. Cristobol Ramón and Lucas Reyes, Language Access in the Immigration System: A Primer, Bipartisan Policy Ctr. Sep. 18, 2020, https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/language-access-in-the-immigration-system-a-primer/ (“Within the immigration context, language access refers to the ability of non-citizens to engage in immigration processes in their primary language.”)
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