NIJC attorney Mark Heller was part of a team of lawyers who met with nearly 400 workers detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on August 25 during a raid at the Howard Industries manufacturing plant in Laurel, Mississippi. After the raid, detainees were transported to a detention center in Jena, Louisiana. About 200 other workers were released by ICE for humanitarian reasons.

"Until and unless there is funding to place advocates near this rural region of Louisiana, it will be very, very difficult to ensure that immigrants detained at this facility receive fair legal representation," Heller said. 

The primary concern among detainees, Heller said, was their inability to communicate with their families because telephone cards were unavailable. Detainees said they were able to purchase cards during their first week at the facility, but that the vendor did not provide more when the supply sold out. The cards that were for sale were expensive, costing one dollar per minute.

"Why can you buy 250 minutes for $10 in drug stores but ICE facilities have granted sale rights to companies that sell time at a one dollar per minute?" Heller asked.

Several of the detainees, many of whom would soon be deported, had not been able to speak with their spouses and young children who were still in Mississippi.

The team of six volunteer attorneys who arrived in Jena on September 10th were the first immigration legal counsel to meet with most of the detainees, more than two weeks after the raid. Only two nonprofit immigration legal aid providers serve the entire state of Louisiana, and both are located more than 140 miles from the Jena detention center. Because immigrant detainees are not provided court-appointed counsel, a national response by non-governmental organizations was necessary to ensure the Laurel workers had some opportunity to exercise their due process rights.

Heller described the isolated setting where the workers were detained:

The facility is a series of one-story concrete block barrack buildings surrounded by a set of razor wire fences.  Most of the buildings are new with a fewer older buildings of the same construction that were formerly operated by the state of Louisiana as a juvenile detention facility.  The pods are dormitories so most of the detainees are being held in a dormitory setting.  Most of the pods house 96 detainees and several of the older buildings hold 40 or 72 per dorm. GEO Corporation took over the facility in October 2007 and the capacity of the facility is 1,160.

Several of the detainees stated there was racism at the facility, not of the violent or name-calling type, but rather a hostile attitude toward them. The GEO staff I saw in my three days did not appear to speak Spanish, as they only spoke English to the detainees in my presence. There were a few Latino ICE officers who spoke Spanish.

The U.S. government, including leaders in Congress and the presidential candidates, must recognize that deportation-focused enforcement operations that deprive people of basic due process and human rights will not fix this country's broken immigration system.

A new bill introduced in the U.S. Senate this month sets a marker for the next president and Congress to finally curb this erosion of justice. The Protect Citizens and Residents from Unlawful Raids and Detention Act (S.3594), introduced September 25, 2008, by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA), calls for codification of the ICE detention standards and increased oversight of ICE's enforcement operations. The bill also requires ICE to create rules to allow for the release of asylum seekers and other vulnerable individuals, and to broaden its use of alternatives to detention for immigrants who are not a danger to the community or a flight risk.

While the Menendez-Kennedy bill is not expected to progress in the Senate in 2008, it does lay down a strong marker for the next Congress and president to take up in 2009.

Read NIJC's full statement on the bill here.