In its report, the ACLU recounts an incident in which a detainee says he showed a Pinal County Jail guard his ICE handbook to explain a complaint.
He says the officer looked at him and said, "We don't go by ICE rules. We go by sheriff's rules."
Gregory Pratt
The cell block where immigrants live at the county jail.
Gregory Pratt
Immigrants find a sliver of sunlight inside the Pinal County Jail, which doesn't allow such detainees to go outside.
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A Pinal County detention officer suggests to New Times during the tour of the jail that grievances are not always taken seriously because detainees do not take them seriously.
"Our grievance officer is there every day, and [detainees] don't want to talk with her," the officer claims. "They wait until she leaves, then say they're upset that they didn't get to share a grievance with her. They choose not to. They want lawsuits."
He claims to know this because detainees supposedly write that on their grievance forms.
"Pay me a sum of money, and we'll call it even," he says one wrote.
The ACLU's Victoria Lopez says she has never seen such a threat by a federal detainee written on a grievance form, and she challenges county jail officials to produce an example.
Immigrants have the nearly impossible task of dealing, while in detention, with complicated legal cases to stay in the United States, the Florence Project's Lindsay Marshall says.
Contrary to what anti-migrant zealots shout, she emphasizes, immigrants in government custody have legal rights.
"It is challenging for people representing themselves while detained to be able to . . . present their cases," she says. "You're asking people whose lives are literally on the line to navigate an incredibly complex field of law, in court, without an attorney."
Marshall says, "[Immigration] cases are really fact-intensive, so you need to do things like collect letters from family members — or collect photos, utility bills, employment records — to prove you've been here for 10 years."
Many legal defenses against deportation require proof that the immigrant has been here for an extended period of time and has been a positive influence in his or her community.
The Florence Project cannot take every case it comes across, so the legal-aid group walks detainees through whatever options they might have to remain in the United States and explains what they must prove to win in court.
Asylum seekers who can demonstrate that their lives would be in danger if they returned to their home countries could be eligible for "humanitarian parole," Marshall says. Along those lines, there is a defense based on a treaty signed by the United States, the Convention Against Torture.
Others seek what is legally known as "cancellation of removal," in which people with green cards or visas ask a judge to weigh their ties and contributions to the United States against a negative, typically a criminal offense or a violation of immigration law.
The Florence Project tells those who decide to fight legally to stay here that they are in for a long battle and that it can take years for cases to go through appeals and finally get adjudicated.
Last year, 279 immigrants, the vast majority from Mexico and Central America, helped by the Florence Project successfully won their cases to remain in the United States, with many still pending.
One of the Florence Project's success stories is Nigerian Ademuyiwa Thompson.
After nearly a year in custody, Thompson recently won his CAT treaty case to remain in the United States. Nigeria is plagued by violence, and Thompson, who has lived in this country for more than 20 years, fears that he would be killed if forced to return.
But the government is appealing the immigration court's ruling, so he remains in the Pinal County Jail, away from his family in California.
Thompson was transferred to Arizona because of space constraints in California.
Unlike Thompson, there are many immigrants who abandon legitimate claims to stay here because they cannot tolerate lengthy incarceration.
"We routinely see people who are eligible to fight, but they choose not to," Marshall says. They give up and ask to be deported.
Many detainees and immigrant advocates believe that the real goal of federal detention is to force as many immigrants as possible — whether they are eligible to stay, or not — to get out of the United States.
"It's just a setup," a detainee at the Pinal County Jail declares to New Times. "They put us in places like this so we'll sign and move on."
The Department of Homeland Security announced a five-year plan in 2009 to reform the immigrant-detention system in the United States and create a "truly civil" program.
Its decision was based on an internal report acknowledging that most facilities ICE contracts with to incarcerate civil violators are "built, and operate, as jails and prisons to confine pre-trial and sentenced felons."
ICE director John Morton told the New York Times that detention "needs to be done thoughtfully and humanely."
He also expressed interest in building new facilities so that the government would no longer be forced to rely on private prisons and county jails for contract bed space.
An attorney for the ACLU in Texas, Vanita Gupta, warned at the time that the government needed to be watched, or else it would not make any changes, Hutton's stated concerns aside.
