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209 Detention and Access to Justice A Florence Project Case Study christopher stenken I step into the visitation room and see the long-­ tired faces packed around kindergarten-­ style lunchroom tables. I greet my co­ worker and we look over the court list for the day. “The two buses were late and they barely got in for court,” Marcelo comments . “I had to do the talk in ten minutes, but I think they got it.” Marcelo is an attorney for the Florence Project and gives know-­ your-­ rights presentations every morning for detainees who have their first court appearance . The Florence Project is a small nonprofit that has been providing free immigration legal services in Arizona detention centers for over twenty years. I have been a paralegal with the project for a year now, and I meet Marcelo at the center when he’s done with his talk to prepare people for their future court appearances. I look over the 8:30 court list and note how many people have told us that they are asking for more time to fight their case to stay in the United States. “Not too many people asking for more time to go over their case, but we have five 10:30s and two final hearings to prepare today. They have everyone in here for dental exams as well,” Marcelo says. We start calling names based on the court list the clerks gave us yesterday. The room is packed. We’ve been doing our presentations and court preparations in the visitation room for a couple of months now. We used to have a semi-­ private setting with cubicle walls where there was some sense of privacy, but when construction began on a new court we were given the boot and had to find a new place where we could work. Here, the guards and all the other detainees are sitting in the same room as we speak with clients. On some days, there is no talking except our conversations so legal confidentiality does not exist. 210 • christopher stenken I begin my days by talking with people who are scheduled for their second hearing. We have an hour to speak one-­ on-­ one with typically eight people before they go to this second court hearing. I grab a file, look at the name, and call out, “Mr. Ortega-­ Sanchez.” Everyone stops talking. “Ortega-­ Sanchez?” I ask again. The orange-­ jumpsuited crowd looks around. “Ortega-­ Sanchez!” one of the more boisterous detainees repeats to the crowd. “Baño,” someone else responds. The guards have taken him to the bathroom, as they do every hour or so for anyone who asks. I grab another file and try again. “Mr. Theodore Lee,” I call out, though I immediately recognize Mr. Lee and walk across the room to him as he stands up. It’s then that I can recall the details of his background and the first time we met. I came to know Mr. Lee in a different manner than most of our clients, whom we screen before their first hearing. I first met Mr. Lee through a letter he sent from the local county jail. Pinal County Jail in Arizona had been leased for bed space under a multimillion-­ dollar contract from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice), so we had been accustomed to working with detainees there. In his letter, Mr. Lee explained his story about coming into ice custody. He wasted no time with formalities and got right to the point. He explained that he came to the United States with his parents when he was seven and became a permanent resident of the United States when he was seventeen . He married, had kids, and worked over twenty years at the U.S. Postal Service. When his marriage fell apart, he started using drugs. One night he was walking home, and was stopped by police. He was searched and found with methamphetamine, a drug he had been using for the past six months. He was taken to jail, had a trial, was found guilty, and served a six-­ month sentence in a California state prison. When the day came that he thought he would be able to begin his life anew, an ice agent arrived at his cell and told him that he was now deportable from the United States under the 1994 Immigration and Nationality Act. He was transferred to Florence and eventually ended up in a cell in the Pinal County Jail, serving...

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