Detainees at a privately operated immigrant detention center in Folkston, Georgia, are routinely denied access to its law library – a violation of their constitutional rights that must be immediately corrected, the SPLC and Ericka Curran, a clinical law professor, said in a letter sent to the warden and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials today.
The Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board should investigate the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office for issuing fake subpoenas that threatened witnesses with fines and jail time to coerce them into answering prosecutors’ questions – actions that violate rules of professional conduct, according to a complaint the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed with the board today.
The policies and procedures at a private, for-profit immigrant detention center in Georgia are violating the due process rights of detainees by forcing them to wait hours to see their attorneys in one of only three meeting rooms at the facility that can house 1,900 detainees, the Southern Poverty Law Center told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the facility’s operator CoreCivic in a letter sent today.
In five Southern states, people released from jail, prison, probation or parole encounter laws that make it more difficult for them to get a job, find housing and access basic services due to their conviction – significant obstacles that must be removed to help people successfully return to their communities, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Louisiana may soon lose its title as the world’s leader in incarceration.
The SPLC and allies asked a judge today to certify a lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s broken public defender system as a class action case – citing an expert report that describes how the state’s overburdened public defense system fails to protect indigent defendants’ constitutional right to counsel.
Hundreds of Louisianans gathered at the state Capitol in Baton Rouge this week as part of an effort by the SPLC and grassroots groups to show support for reforms aimed at ending the state’s status as the nation’s leader in incarceration.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and a coalition of immigrant rights groups today demanded an immediate investigation into the death of a 47-year-old man held at the LaSalle Detention Center in Louisiana – the fourth death of a LaSalle detainee in a little more than a year.
Atlanta Immigration Court judges are failing to uphold ethical standards that ensure immigrants receive fair and impartial treatment – failures that warrant an investigation, according to the findings of a project by the Southern Poverty Law Center SPLC and Emory University School of Law.
Louisiana officials are denying poor people their constitutional right to counsel by failing to establish an effective statewide public defense system, according to a lawsuit filed today by the SPLC and its allies.
