Lawyers Fight ICE for Access: ‘I Want to Hear My Client’s Voice’

Immigration attorneys across the US are struggling to make contact with clients who have been swept up in the Trump administration’s record number of immigration arrests. They’re turning to federal courts for help.

Lawyers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Oregon, and Texas—all hotbeds of the administration’s increased immigration enforcement efforts—describe a constant scramble to find their clients, who are often being moved to out-of-state facilities. Meanwhile, the detainees face an impossible choice: remain cut off in crowded, squalid conditions or agree to leave the country immediately.

The situation has prompted four orders from judges who said the government must facilitate attorney-client communication and provide adequate food, water, and medical care at its facilities. But it’s often unclear whether the judges’ orders are being followed, and clients are frequently moved before attorneys find them. There are at least nine lawsuits pending with similar claims.

“It’s a game of whack-a-mole for attorneys,” said Carmen Iguina González, deputy director for immigration detention at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “Even that first basic conversation can’t happen because from the beginning you can’t find them. If you find them, you can’t access them because there are no phones or visitation rooms. And if you do find them, it takes weeks to contact them, and sometimes they’re just moved and deported.”

Nearly 69,000 people are currently detained by ICE and US Customs and Border Protection, according to government data from January. That’s an almost 83% increase over the nearly 37,700 people detained at the end of fiscal year 2024. In Minnesota, where the administration has focused its efforts in the first month of 2026, at least 2,500 non-citizens have been arrested since Jan. 14, according to ICE.

A Homeland Security spokesperson in an emailed statement denied wholesale claims that conditions at ICE facilities are subpar and that detainees don’t have access to attorneys, noting that the standards at ICE detention facilities are higher than at most US prisons. The agency declined to comment on the individual claims in this article.

“The facts are illegal aliens in detention have access to phones they can use to contact their families and lawyers. Additionally, ICE gives all illegal aliens arrested a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys. All detainees receive full due process,” the spokesperson said.

‘I Want to Hear My Client’s Voice’

Shelby Vcelka arrived at the ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., in October with a breast pump and nipple cream for her client, the Chicago-area attorney said in federal court testimony. But, she said, she wasn’t allowed to meet with the woman, who’d been separated from her nursing child.

Vcelka’s client never received the items as she was shuffled to Indiana and then Louisiana, Vcelka said. She didn’t hear from her client until after she had been taken to Mexico.

“As an attorney, it’s a little scary when you can’t figure out what’s going on, because you’re trying to chase your clients down,” Vcelka said in an interview with Bloomberg Law. “This isn’t like ‘oh they’re not picking up the phone today, I’ll try again tomorrow.’ This is a ‘now my client is across state lines, and I don’t know where they are.’ I want to hear my client’s voice.”

In a request to dismiss the lawsuit over attorney access at the Chicago-area facility, the administration argued that officials don’t have to provide immediate access to an attorney and said some categories of detainees don’t have a Fifth Amendment right to counsel at all.

“Simply put, plaintiffs overstate the constitutional protections detainees at Broadview possess,” they wrote.

In Eugene, Ore., lawyers have been blocked from entering the city’s ICE field office for months, according to court declarations. The building is a temporary processing facility where the government says people are only held for 12 hours before being transferred to a privately-run detention facility in Tacoma, Wash.

“As far as we know, no attorneys have been in the building since mid-September,” Jordan Cunnings, legal director at Innovation Law Lab, said of the Eugene facility. It’s not known how many people have been held there in the last year, or how many are still in the facility. ICE didn’t respond to request for comment.

Innovation Law Lab is suing the government on behalf of nonprofit CLEAR Clinic and their clients in Oregon. At least 15 attorneys filed declarations between October and December detailing issues with accessing clients in the Eugene and Portland field offices and the Tacoma facility. Josephine Moberg of CLEAR Clinic said in a declaration that while she was asked to wait outside the ICE field office, ICE agents took her client out the back door and transported them to the Tacoma detention center.

In response, ICE said in a reply brief that safety and security concerns affect attorneys’ ability to access the facility, as do difficulties coordinating and establishing an attorney-client relationship during the short period detainees are supposed to be held in Eugene.

One immigrant who lives in Portland told the court they were arrested by ICE on Oct. 18, driven to and processed in an “empty parking lot” in Vancouver, Wash., and then taken to the Tacoma detention facility. The nonresident—who filed an anonymous declaration with the court—called their lawyer, Emma Gill, the next day but Gill said the call wasn’t confidential and that she had to wait for approval to have a confidential account to accept phone calls as an attorney.

In a private call on Oct. 20, the detainee said Gill explained it would be difficult to find an attorney in Washington who could provide the free representation that the immigrant was getting through the Equity Corps of Oregon that provides free, universal representation to detained Oregonians.

“It is very crowded here. I am constantly afraid that an ICE officer will come get me to deport me. I am desperate for someone to help me file a habeas petition to fight my detention, but I cannot afford to pay an attorney in Washington to help me,” the detainee wrote in a declaration with the court.

Calls Blocked

Attorneys in New York, Chicago, and LA report in interviews and court declarations losing contact with clients when the detainees have been transferred outside the cities in which they were arrested.

Attorney Kevin Herrera couldn’t get inside of ICE’s suburban Chicago facility to see his client, who had deferred-action status protecting him from deportation, he told a federal court. Herrera learned later that the client showed authorities his work authorization, but officers said the only way to get out of the freezing, crowded building was to sign a voluntary departure form. The man was ultimately released after first being transferred to Indiana, Herrera said in an interview.

Detainees in Texas’ Dilley Immigration Processing Center, southwest of San Antonio, described wormy food, moldy water, and constant sickness in declarations taken between September and December and submitted to a California federal judge.

The declarations also describe difficulty in reaching out to their attorneys. Staff at times don’t make it clear to detainees they’re allowed to make free calls to the Texas immigration legal services agency RAICES, and detainees say they fear repercussions for talking with lawyers.

Javier Hidalgo, legal director of RAICES, said though his team has had trouble contacting clients inside the center it’s even “harder for families that are detained there to contact us.”

One detainee in New York told the federal court that he was able to call his sister once a day for up to seven minutes but there was always a guard nearby listening, and no one ever mentioned that legal calls were available or that there was any option for private calls.

Some guards threatened to withhold people’s calls, the detainee added. Another detainee told the court he noticed a small paper in a window that said detainees have a right to a 10-minute call each day, but he was cut off from his calls before that.

A War of Attrition

Detained noncitizens “are entitled to the minimum levels of humane treatment and access to counsel that are required by the Constitution,” Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said in September when he ordered ICE to improve facility conditions and let detainees call their attorneys. The federal government is appealing Kaplan’s injunction at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Kaplan’s order was the first, but Judge Robert Gettleman in Chicago issued a similar order in November requiring access to free, private attorney phone calls at the Broadview building. In Los Angeles, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong also said in November the facility there must provide private places for attorneys to meet with their clients.

Federal district court Judge Julie R. Rubin in Baltimore in December refused to dismiss claims that people detained in an ICE holding facility in the area weren’t allowed to speak to their attorneys. The judge partially granted the motion to dismiss, but said the government’s argument that it has not restricted access to counsel “is not compelling.” And in a case involving Guantanamo Bay, Judge Carl J. Nichols denied a request for temporary restraining order but has yet to rule on the government’s motion to dismiss.

“It feels like a war of attrition,” Sarika Arya of Brooklyn Defender Services said. “Who will capitulate first? Detention is so strenuous and so hard to endure that some people, understandably say, ‘enough.’”