MINNEAPOLIS – A federal judge extended her order improving detainees’ access to their lawyers while in immigration custody in Minnesota.

In a 69-page ruling issued March 26, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel said attorneys have shown numerous examples of difficulties reaching clients brought to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building by immigration agents. Brasel upheld her previous order requiring the U.S. government to continue to improve detainees’ access to basic legal services, saying federal officials’ efforts have been “inconsistent.”

“Defendants’ past violations were not minor infringements incidental to confinement. They devastated detainees’ right to due process — a right upon which all others rest,” she wrote.

The ruling comes one week after immigration attorneys and noncitizens formerly detained at Whipple testified about the difficulties communicating with each other from the facility in Fort Snelling due to a lack of phones or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers transferring an immigrant almost immediately to another facility in Texas.

“All of these barriers make it difficult — if not impossible — for attorneys to effectively represent their clients,” Brasel concluded.

In response to the ruling, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said: “All detainees receive due process. No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States.

“ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

In her decision, Brasel found ICE Deputy Field Office Director Tauria Rich’s testimony during the March 19 hearing about conditions at Whipple “inconsistent at best and incredible at worst.” Among the inconsistencies cited in the ruling were her claims that the government did not detain people overnight at Whipple, despite detainees’ statements about being held several days at the facility. Brasel also said Rich often couldn’t answer the court’s questions because they were outside the scope of her job, yet she was their only witness to testify.

“If she does not have an answer, neither does the Court,” Brasel said.

Brasel also rejected federal claims that the announced drawdown of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, made the lawsuit moot. The drawdown, Brasel said, “did not resolve the access to counsel issues at the heart of this lawsuit.”

The protections include providing detainees free, private and unmonitored access to telephones with no time limit unless under certain circumstances. All detainees must be given a written notice outlining their access to legal services within one hour of arriving at Whipple. ICE also cannot transfer a detainee outside of Minnesota during the first 72 hours of their detention.

Repeating a phrase in her previous order, Brasel said in her March 26 order that “it appears that in planning for Operation Metro Surge, the government failed to plan for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees.”

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