Study: ICE fails to provide detainees with language interpretation required by its own rules

An immigrant makes a call from his segregation cell at the detention facility in Adelanto, Calif., in 2013. “The very nature of ICE’s language access failures makes it effectively impossible for detained individuals to raise, challenge, or remedy these problems on their own,” the report states. In a statement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson Mike Alvarez said the agency is committed to ensuring detainees have primary language access in facility programs and activities. Because of that, language access in detention facility law libraries is essential for non-English speakers “to even understand the charges against them, much less prepare any sort of legal defense to deportation,” the report states. But during a review last year, Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties said it had received 208 allegations related to language access during the last five years, opened 116 complaint investigations and issued 118 recommendations to immigration officials regarding those violations.