A recent Los Angeles Times editorial shed light on a survey from the Heartland Alliance's National Immigrant Justice Center showing that suspected illiegal immigrants held in remote detention facilities have a harder time gaining access to legal services.
You can read the study here.
From the editorial:
Having a lawyer makes a difference. A 2005 Migration Policy Institute study found that the odds of success double when detainees seeking to become lawful permanent citizens have attorneys. For those seeking asylum, the odds of success increase sixfold. Also, in many cases attorneys succeed not by helping detainees remain in the United States but by assisting efforts to speed deportation proceedings, freeing them to return home.
Yet a recent report by the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center found that 80% of detainees are held in facilities whose location makes it difficult to find and retain an attorney. The detention center in El Centro, for example, has more detainees than any other in the country, but because of its location, they have the least access to attorneys. At more than a quarter of the nation's 300 facilities, there is no access at all to legal aid from the nongovernmental organizations that provide low-cost and pro bono attorneys for detainees, and the federal government's legal orientation programs— which are not an adequate substitute for an attorney but are nevertheless of much assistance — are available in only 17% of facilities. Lastly, rules regulating telephone access to attorneys are cumbersome to the point of hindering access.
