Oregon Immigration Rights Groups Sue ICE Alleging It Is Preventing Access To Lawyers

By Mia Maldonado

( Oregon Capital Chronicle ) — Two Oregon immigrant rights advocacy groups sued three federal immigration agencies on Thursday alleging they are purposefully denying people in detention centers access to their lawyers before transferring them out of state.

The suit was brought against the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the ICE field office in Seattle, as well as the leaders of each agency, by CLEAR Clinic, a Portland-based legal nonprofit that provides free immigration counsel, and Woodburn-based Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste — also known as PCUN, Oregon’s largest Latino labor union. The groups are represented by Innovation Law Lab, a Portland-based legal nonprofit that specializes in immigrant and refugee cases.

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