SAN ANTONIO—Lawyers representing immigrant mothers held in a South Texas detention center say the women have been denied counsel and coerced into accepting ankle-monitoring bracelets as a condition of release, even after judges made clear that paying their bonds would suffice.
In a Monday letter to Sarah Saldaña, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the leaders of a volunteer lawyers’ project said they were “dismayed by the lack of transparency, and the coercion, disorganization, and confusion” surrounding recent releases. Among the irregularities cited were summons to courtrooms scrawled on yellow sticky notes, no counsel or judge present in court, and women being told that the prior word of immigration judges “has no value.”
