In a blistering 41-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brazell ordered ICE to stop interfering with the “constitutional right to access counsel” of immigrant detainees.
Trump administration ends Minnesota immigration operation
Border czar Tom Homan announced the end of Minnesota’s immigration operation after a deadly shooting sparked tensions and community backlash.
A federal judge in Minnesota issued an order Thursday afternoon criticizing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for barring immigrant detainees’ “constitutional right to access to an attorney.”
The blistering 41-page decision by U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brazell was handed down in response to a lawsuit brought by the nonprofit group Human Rights Defenders, which works with immigrants. The group accused ICE of interfering with access to customers. Brazell’s order requires ICE to take several steps to ensure that immigrants and their attorneys can talk.
“ICE has isolated thousands of people, most of them detained at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, from their lawyers,” Brazell wrote, referring to the immigration enforcement base of operations south of downtown Minneapolis.
Brazell called ICE’s claim that it provided detainees with access to legal counsel “haphazard,” and said ICE was making the claim “without examples or evidence.”
The judge wrote that, by contrast, the groups that filed the lawsuit presented specific examples in which ICE made it unduly difficult for detainees and their lawyers to speak out. Lawyers are unable to use ICE’s online database to locate their clients’ detainees, cannot call them, and detainees are unable to make confidential phone calls, according to court documents.
“The gulf between the parties’ evidence is too wide and too deep for defendant to overcome,” Brazell wrote.
Among the judge’s rules, ICE is ordered to allow detainees in Minnesota to call their attorneys confidentially, to maintain accurate public records of the detainees’ whereabouts, and to allow detainees to notify their attorneys if they are moved.
Brazell’s order comes as the Department of Homeland Security announces it is winding down Operation Metro Surge, the White House’s immigration enforcement crackdown on the Minneapolis area.
President Donald Trump has said his administration is targeting Democratic-led areas for alleged welfare fraud related to Somali immigrants. The president has faced intense backlash for militarily sending thousands of immigration agents to states in the wake of the shooting deaths of Alex Preti and Renee Good by federal agents.
