The stop-work order that halted funding for programs providing legal-aid information to people facing deportation was reversed Sunday by the U.S. Justice Department, according to the Associated Press.
Vanessa Gutierrez, a deputy director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project told The Seattle Times the change appeared to be related to a temporary restraining order in a separate lawsuit over President Donald Trump’s freeze of federal grants, loans and financial assistance programs. According to the Times, Gutierrez said her organization and other nonprofits who brought the lawsuit will continue it because the Trump administration could change its mind again.
Original story: Amid the whirlwind of executive orders President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office, one related to illegal immigration led to curtailed access to basic legal information for noncitizens in deportation proceedings, according to a lawsuit filed last week, including those held at the detention facility in Tacoma.
The lawsuit was filed Friday against the U.S. government by 10 nonprofit organizations that receive federal funding to operate programs that educate noncitizens in deportation cases around the country about their rights in the immigration process.
One of the plaintiffs is the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which connects immigrants detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center — as well as noncitizens who aren’t in detention — with free legal representation, education and legal services.
The organization runs one of the four programs at the center of the lawsuit, a Legal Orientation Program, which includes having staff travel to the detention center in Tacoma four to five times a week to give “Know Your Rights” presentations to people who are detained and don’t have an attorney.
Two days after Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review issued a stop-work order halting funding for Legal Orientation Programs and the three other programs, according to the lawsuit.
The stop-work order was put in place to audit the programs under Trump’s order, a copy of the complaint states, but it did not explain how long it would last or if the stop was meant to be temporary.
Since then, “Know Your Rights” presentations at the NWIPC in Tacoma stopped, and the team that gave them lost access to daily rosters of people detained at the facility and bi-weekly reports on their upcoming court dates, Vanessa Gutierrez, a deputy director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said in a sworn statement filed in the case.
Posters inside the detention center on the Tideflats that had contact information for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project were taken down from inside housing pods, according to Gutierrez, and Legal Orientation Program staff have gotten pushback about meeting with people individually from the private contractor that runs the facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, The Geo Group.
Gutierrez said in the written statement that even a few missed Legal Orientation Program sessions could significantly alter the trajectory of someone’s case.
“Without timely access to legal counsel, detained individuals might not be informed of their rights, which could lead them to inadvertently waive important legal protections or miss critical opportunities to contest their detention or removal,” Gutierrez wrote.
Attorneys for the U.S. government have 60 days to respond to the lawsuit after receiving a summons in the case, according to court records. So far no response has been filed.
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the court to grant an injunction to stop the government from withholding funding for the four programs, allow the 10 nonprofits access to immigration courts and detention facilities they have historically received and to replace posters and other educational materials that were removed from facilities.
A status conference in the case occurred Monday, according to court records, and a joint status report was expected to be filed within a week.
The programming at issue in the case is implemented by the Executive Office for Immigration Review by contracting with the Acacia Center for Justice, the complaint states, which then subcontracts with nonprofit organizations to administer the programs across the country.
Most recently, Congress appropriated $28 million for Legal Orientation Programs and Immigration Court Helpdesk programs in the 2024 Consolidated Appropriations Act, according to the lawsuit.
Trump’s administration tried to put a stop to the Legal Orientation Program during his first term, in 2018, according to the lawsuit, by abruptly stopping funding to audit the programs, but the effort failed.
A week after it was announced, U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committee members voiced support for Legal Orientation Programs and Immigration Court Helpdesk programs. According to the lawsuit, the officials wrote that the Department of Justice was “systematically deconstructing basic due process protections for immigrants.”
Members of the U.S. Senate also called on the Department of Justice to restart the programs, including Democratic Washington state Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the programs could continue during the audit after program providers threatened legal action, according to the lawsuit, and after then-director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review James McHenry testified to Congress that he disregarded previous studies that found the Legal Orientation Program saved money.
The renewed stoppage of funding comes at a particularly urgent time, according to the lawsuit, as detentions and deportations are increasing “exponentially.” Documents in the court file state that the NWIPC in Tacoma currently houses about 800 to 1,000 people at any given time. It has a capacity to detain up to 1,575 people, and Gutierrez said her organization fully expects it to be at capacity soon.
Unlike criminal cases in the United States, people in immigration proceedings don’t have a right to an attorney, and the vast majority of detained individuals represent themselves. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 79% of noncitizens in deportation proceedings in fiscal year 2022 didn’t have access to counsel.
Often, the only attorney many people held in immigration detention ever see are providers of these now-stopped programs, according to the lawsuit.
“And Program providers often are the only outsiders to witness noncitizens in detention or observe the conditions of their detention,” the complaint states. “By denying Program providers access, Defendants ensure that no legal service providers’ eyes are watching what the government does inside.”
The lawsuit says that stopping the programs and restricting the nonprofits’ access to detention facilities would result in a less efficient and costlier immigration system, forcing judges to spend more time explaining removal proceedings and ensuring noncitizens understand what is happening in their cases.
After the stop-work order was issued, a “policy manual” was posted to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s website, according to the lawsuit, which claimed that the general Legal Orientation Program was a “wasteful program.”
According to the lawsuit, a 2012 study done by the Executive Office for Immigration Review found that the Legal Orientation Program saved the government nearly $18 million over a three-year period. The savings were actually greater, according to the lawsuit, which noted that although Judiciary Committee members characterized it that way, the program actually saved nearly $18 million per year.
