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🕯️ Fighting in the Dark: ICE Detention Without Access to Lawyers
A surge in remote detentions is leaving immigrants scared, isolated, and without a fair fight.
Shelly San Martin
August 29, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
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This Week’s Immigration News Highlights
When We’re Shut Out, So Is Justice
Let me tell you what I’ve been dealing with, just this week.
One of my detained clients, a wife, mother, and member of the LGBTQ+ community, was moved from the detention center where I had some access. No notice. No update. No call. Just, gone. Transferred across state lines overnight.
It took hours of sheer persistence to even figure out where she was. When I finally got someone on the line? “She’s here, but I cannot pass the call to her.” What?
Another client, a cook, was taken into ICE custody simply for showing up to his regular check-in. This client has protection from deportation. So why is he detained? No answers. Just silence.
This is what our immigration system looks like right now, across the country. Detentions have surged by over 50% in the past year. And with that, we’re seeing more clients held in remote facilities, with no language support and no access to counsel.
We, attorneys, are being shut out.
And when we’re shut out, our clients are stripped of due process. They’re told to sign documents they can’t read. They’re scared. Isolated. And many give up, not because they want to, but because the system has made it impossible to keep fighting.
I’m sharing this for the new attorneys. The law students. The young advocates. And my fellow colleagues wondering if it’s supposed to be this hard.
It’s not just hard, it’s cruel, calculated, and happening in plain sight.
But we can’t stop. Keep showing up. Keep pushing. Keep documenting everything. Because if we stop fighting for access, we stop fighting for justice.
In Closing!
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