ICE Cuts Off Free Calls to Lawyers for Immigrant Detainees in California

Authorities on Thursday ended free legal phone calls for immigrant detainees fighting deportation cases from two facilities in the southern Central Valley, drawing backlash from advocates who said the move would hurt people’s ability to win release regardless of their ability to pay.

Immigrants held at the for-profit detention centers in Bakersfield and nearby McFarland are often hundreds of miles away from their legal services and rely on phone calls to prepare their cases.

“Were it not for the ability to reach attorneys, I would not have been able to challenge deportation proceedings and would have been deported to a country where I would have faced great harm and even death,” said Jose Ruben Hernandez Gomez, who was freed from one of the detention centers after being represented by the San Francisco public defender’s office.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately return a request for comment on why it has ended the no-cost calls to legal counsel at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield and Golden State Annex in McFarland. The GEO Group, one of the world’s largest private prison companies, operates the two facilities that held more than 350 detainees as of July.

Bree Bernwanger, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, said ICE alerted the detainees over the July 4 weekend that free calls to counsel would end on Aug. 1.

“ICE has given no explanation for why they are cutting off these calls that have been in place since 2016 and that are crucial to people in custody,” Bernwanger told KQED.

The free legal phone calls were the result of a settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU alleging that inadequate telephone access violated detainees’ right to a full and fair hearing. That settlement has since expired, Bernwanger said.

“Even though the settlement agreement expired, that obligation that ICE has to make sure people in custody can call their lawyers and make phone calls to try to find counsel … doesn’t go away,” she said.

A new process to clear legal service providers to receive free phone calls from the ICE detention centers could take months, Bernwenger added.

Several studies show that most detained immigrants do not have legal representation, which hurts their chances of winning their cases.

In June, ICE discontinued a separate pandemic-era nationwide program that allowed most of the approximately 37,000 people in its custody 520 free minutes per month of phone calls, including to family or friends.

Last month, dozens held at Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex relaunched labor and hunger strikes to protest the phone call charges as well as long-standing $1-a-day wages and conditions they say violate ICE’s own detention standards, including expired food. Detainees there say they have faced retaliation for refusing to work or eat while protesting conditions on and off for years.

Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José) blamed Republicans in Congress for declining to keep funding ICE’s nationwide free calls program.

“Justice can only properly be served when everyone has access to counsel and relevant evidence, and there are still barriers [like the cost of phone calls] that prevent the system from working equitably,” said Lofgren, a former chair of the House Judiciary Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee.

KQED’s Spencer Whitney contributed to this report.