There are two legal tracks for immigrants who find themselves in ICE custody, says Lindsay Marshall, executive director of the Florence Project, a not-for-profit organization that provides free legal consultations to prisoners in ICE custody.
Immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border or who have been in the United States for 14 days or fewer are subject to "expedited removal," Marshall says, a process that typically leads to quick deportation.
The Florence Detention Center, just down the road has a rec yard fit for a summer camp.
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These people do not have a case to remain in the United States.
Then there are immigrants with more complicated cases, immigrants who have lived in the United States for many years or are members of mixed-status families (their spouses and/or children are U.S. citizens). Some fear they will be tortured or killed if they return to their home countries.
These cases are heard by federal immigration courts, whose rulings can be challenged to the Board of Immigration Appeals. After that, the government or the detainee can go to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a final ruling.
Immigrants held by ICE are charged with immigration violations, presented to them in Notices to Appear, the immigration equivalent of an indictment or civil complaint. The legal process that such immigrants go through is separate from the criminal justice system.
Notices to Appear charge immigrants as arriving aliens, usually asylum seekers or refugees; as present in the United States without legal authorization; or as violators of the terms of their legal entry (including immigrants who had been working here on tourist visas).
Some immigrants find their way into the detention system after criminal convictions or arrests. Immigrants who are convicted of crimes serve their time and then are turned over to ICE, where they continue to be held for immigration violations.
The American Civil Liberties Union says some immigrants who have committed crimes need to be detained, but the group argues that most immigrants in detention pose no threat to society and deserve better than to remain in jail indefinitely while their cases crawl through the system.
Bond is almost impossible for immigrants to get because most do not have an attorney to advocate for them. Judges are not allowed to consider granting bond to detainees with criminal records, even non-violent offenders.
Because of extensions, court backlogs, and the complicated nature of these cases, some can drag on for five years or more.
Activist groups for immigrants, and many immigration attorneys, see detention as a legal sword the federal government holds over immigrants' heads. If immigrants accused of nothing more than being in the United States illegally choose to leave voluntarily, they go free in their native countries. If they don't, they are incarcerated.
"The biggest obstacle [facing detainees]," Lindsay Marshall says, "is making the choice to pursue their rights and fight their cases while knowing they are going to be locked up [for what often turns out to be a long time]."
Immigrant detainees at the Pinal County Jail are isolated from outside contact, unlike detainees at the Florence Detention Center, Florence Correctional, the Central Arizona Detention Center, and the Eloy Detention Center.
Pinal County is the only federal contractor in the immigrant-detention business in Arizona that does not allow its prisoners to go outdoors.
The Pinal County Jail also is the only facility that does not allow prisoners to see family in person.
Leticia is a Guatemalan who spent 21 months in ICE custody, 12 of them at the Pinal County Jail. She was the single mother of two minors, 17 and 8, when she was detained. Both are U.S. citizens.
In January 2009, after living for 20 years in Phoenix, she was taken into ICE custody. Leticia's case is, like most immigrants' cases, full of complications.
She applied for legal status in 1996 and was granted it in 1997. But with the passage of a 1996 immigration law, the rules for earning legal status changed, and a judge retroactively applied the new law to her case, denying her plea to remain in the United States.
The attorney representing Leticia did not specifically challenge the retroactive ruling in his appeal, and the immigration Board of Appeals authorized her deportation in 2002. Her attorney appealed that order and, in 2004, the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court affirmed that she could be deported.
ICE did not take her into custody until January 2009.
The next month, a different attorney filed a habeas corpus petition on her behalf in the Ninth Circuit, arguing that the immigration court got its ruling wrong, her previous lawyer had been incompetent, and deporting her would be a grave injustice for her family, creating orphans the state would have to care for.
While the court considered her petition, Leticia was detained by the federal government and denied contact with her family.
After a couple of weeks in the Pinal County Jail, Leticia asked an ICE agent how long she might expect to be imprisoned.
When Leticia finished explaining the details of her case, the agent looked at her and said, "Cases like yours take seven to 10 years."
Leticia was horrified and considered signing a deportation order to get out of jail. But her teenage daughter, Leslie, wanted to remain in America, so she decided to continue fighting her case.
