No emergency injunction for migrants held in Oregon without access to counsel

(CN) — A federal judge declined on Thursday to order the Department of Homeland Security to make sure detained migrants in Oregon have access to attorneys after an emergency request from a pair of nonprofits.

"At this preliminary stage, the court finds that plaintiffs declarations present evidence of defendants’ practices and policies that may violate a detainees’ constitutional rights or conflict with Defendants’ own rules and regulations," wrote U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in her six-page order. "However, defendants have presented evidence contradicting plaintiffs’ allegations and the testimony and evidence in the declarations does not show that the law would 'clearly favor' plaintiffs."

Clear Clinic, a Portland, Oregon-based pro bono law firm, and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, a nonprofit representing Latino farmworkers, sued the Department of Homeland Security earlier in October, accusing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of blocking detainees from having access to lawyers.

Detainees are held in ICE facilities for mere hours before being transferred to larger facilities out of state, which denies them access to lawyers, the nonprofits say.

By the time they are transferred out-of-state, it's hard for family members to find them. Within a matter of days, some are even sent to a different country — perhaps even one they've never been to before, the plaintiffs claim.

The nonprofits' attorney Tess Hellgren told the judge at a hearing last week, “Even at this early stage, individuals are pressured into signing things they don’t understand. In some cases, they’re offered financial incentives to accept self-deportation.”

In June, President Donald Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social, that he was ordering ICE agents to "do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History."

According to the plaintiffs and other advocates, the administration has given ICE a daily quota of 3,000 arrests. The result, they say, are indiscriminate, mass roundups of Latinos all over the country.

At last week's hearing, Aiken, a Bill-Clinton appointee, appeared to acknowledge that such a ramp-up could not be accomplished without trampling over some constitutional protections.

“When you’re rapidly collecting non-English speaking people away from their homes and taking them to out of state facilities," she asked, "how do you avoid violating their right to counsel?”

In their motion for a temporary restraining order, the plaintiffs asked the judge to order ICE to provide detainees with “constitutionally sufficient access to counsel,” by designating a room for private meetings with attorneys, giving detainees access to telephones and providing Clear Clinic with notice of who in Oregon was being detained.

Attorneys from the Department of Justice argued that facilities in Oregon aren't capable of holding anyone for more than 12 hours — and local land use agreements prevent them doing so as well.

They've also said that the other things Clear Clinic was asking for were impractical. There simply wasn't enough time, they said, for all the migrants to meet with lawyers before they were whisked off to another detention center.

The plaintiffs will have to wait until Dec. 12 for a second crack at a protective order, when a hearing over their motion for a preliminary injunction is scheduled.

Then, Aiken wrote, "the parties shall have additional time to investigate the facts of their case and provide a more robust record to litigate the preliminary injunction."

In a written statement, a spokesperson for Innovation Law Lab, the firm representing the plaintiffs, said: "The hearing comes amid a surge in violent, reckless, and arbitrary immigration enforcement in our state. Federal agents have targeted Oregonians on their way to work, at the grocery store, and at school drop-offs. This morning alone, ICE sweeps targeted multiple farmworkers in Woodburn and detained several others in the metro areas. Attorneys are actively seeking to meet with clients now."

A Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment.

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