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The Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI), a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, provides pro bono legal representation to immigrants detained in the southeastern United States. Young lawyers are recruited to accompany a senior lawyer, to help detainees. I was invited along with the interpreter to help publicize the lawyers’ work.
Attorney intern and inmate
Mumps
A mumps outbreak resulted in limited space for interviewing detainees.
Talking
Attorney and detainee
A hearing
Detainees were furnished off-site interpreters, using earphones, for their hearings. Most men had little or no access to legal help. Conditions in the prison were such that some wanted only to be deported. One young man placed in solitary confinement committed suicide.
Attorney and client
This man wanted only to be remanded to prison in Colombia, his country, rather than remain in ICE custody for the drug charges of which he was guilty. His daughter lived in the US.
Detainee and attorneys
Detainee with senior and junior attorneys
Waiting for released inmates
Detainees who achieved parole or (rarely) asylum were released late at night. Those who had no family or friends waiting for them boarded a bus that drove an hour to the nearest city and left them outside the bus station, by then closed for the night. The released men would wait outside until the station reopened in the morning.