Lawyers are teaching immigrants at Adelanto how to challenge their own detentions

A nonprofit law firm has created a resource to teach people who are in custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, or at the neighboring Desert View Annex, how to challenge their detainment.

Available in English and in Spanish, the information packet walks immigrant detainees through the process of filling out their own petitions for habeas corpus.

“Habeas corpus” means “you have the body” in Latin. In the U.S., this writ refers to a judicial order that forces authorities to bring the person they’ve detained before a federal district court and justify their continued confinement.

This provision — enshrined in Section 9 of Article I of the U.S. Constitution — is a safeguard against arbitrary imprisonment.

Immigrant Defenders Law Center created its resource for people who meet two criteria:

1. The petitioner has an open case in immigration court or a pending appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals.
2. The petitioner was previously detained and released by immigrant officials. 

Once immigrant officials release a detainee — once they decide that the person in question is not dangerous and does not pose a flight risk — “they can't just arrest you again without proof of any change in circumstance,” said Sarah Houston, managing attorney of the law firm’s rapid response team.

An LAist investigation recently found that more immigrants are being held in detention without bond, and the increase in denials is steepest at Adelanto. Plus, given reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions at Adelanto, along with a surge in deaths at ICE detention facilities across the country, Houston said her team is acting out of a sense of urgency.

“We don't want anyone to sit in detention for months and months, when they could potentially be drafting this and getting out,” she said.

How this resource helps immigrant detainees

Immigrant Defenders Law Center is based in downtown L.A. Each week, their attorneys make the trek to the long-term detention facilities in Adelanto, out in the Mojave desert.

“We have a great network [of pro bono and low bono lawyers],” Houston said, “but there is no way we have enough attorneys to meet the needs of [scores of detainees].”

At the same time, she added, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California was getting inundated with petitions for habeas corpus — so much so that it made a form for detainees who opt to represent themselves. In the legal world, self-representation is referred to as “pro se.”

Meanwhile, Houston and her team kept hearing about people who’d been re-detained at Adelanto. In response, they created their resource for these “pro se” litigants.

The nonprofit’s 24-page resource contains detailed instructions on how to file a petition for habeas corpus, but it’s meant to be uncomplicated, Houston said. When creating it, the law firm’s goal was to “make it as clear as possible,” while mitigating the possibility that petitioners might make a mistake.

Before sharing the resource widely, the law firm identified one detainee for a test case. A judge decided the government was holding that person in custody illegally. Then, another detainee used the resource to secure his release and that of five others, Houston said.

Now, when her team goes to Adelanto, they take packets of the resource with them to distribute widely among detainees.

“Our clients are so intelligent and so resourceful, and they will do anything to go back to their families,” she said. “Our job is to give them as much information as possible for them to be able to draft the best habeas.”

What happens if a petitioner makes an error?  

Even with detailed instructions, Houston acknowledged, detainees who file habeas corpus petitions “sometimes do make mistakes.” As a result, their petition might get rejected, forcing the detainee to refile. But in Houston’s experience, courts tend to be more lenient when people are representing themselves.

“If it's a minor error, they'll just go forward with it,” she said.

Under the second Trump administration, petitions for habeas corpus have skyrocketed.

A ProPublica report found that immigrants filed more of these petitions in the first 13 months of the second Trump administration than in the past three administrations combined — including President Donald Trump’s first. In parts of California and Texas, these petitions have been especially prevalent.

Houston underscored that the resource her team created is specifically geared at people who are both detained at Adelanto and who meet the criteria she outlined.

Habeas corpus is “so complicated that you can't make a resource like this for every type of person,” she said. “We wanted to start off where we know exactly what the case law is, where it's pretty clear cut.”

The law firm is currently working on translating the resource, to ensure it’s available to immigrants who speak other languages.