Many detained immigrants facing deportation from the US are woken up in the middle of the night and put on airplanes. Their destination: deportation centers hundreds of miles away – far from the moral support of their families and communities.
Hundreds of thousands of detainees are transferred each year, although in many cases it puts their lawyers out of reach and leaves behind their character witnesses. Commonly, detainees are transferred to states that don’t have enough immigration attorneys to take their cases.
It can make building a legal defense against deportation seem impossible.
But after three years of work by Human Rights Watch, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has adopted a new policy that could substantially reduce the number of transfers, giving immigrants a fairer chance.
Read more after the jump.
(via fuckyeahmexico)
