ICE has been transferring detainees with attorneys from the Otay Mesa Detention Center to other locations around the country, even though their cases are already underway in San Diego. This has resulted in legal representation challenges and potential delays in asylum hearings.
FILE – In this May 26, 2010, file photo a man detained at the Otay Mesa immigration detention center looks out from a room in San Diego.
Moving their cases would mean, at least for those with county attorneys, that their lawyers would no longer be able to represent them. In many of the cases that attorneys described to Capital & Main, ICE is transferring people who have attorneys, family and pending hearings in the San Diego area. That month, San Diego agents apprehended people entering the United States roughly 13,300 times. That’s less than half of the roughly 32,500 crossings that agents apprehended in May 2024, when Garcia said transfers first increased dramatically.
Judges at the receiving courts denied asylum in 74% to 95% of cases in that same time period, the data show. On the afternoon in October, the first person on Judge Partida’s docket, a man from Nicaragua, wasn’t in the courtroom or on the video conference system. He was still in ICE custody, but the agency hadn’t produced him for his case.
His wife had previously been held at Otay Mesa as well, but Partida soon learned that ICE had transferred the woman to Louisiana. ICE hadn’t been able to produce the wife via video because of the time difference, ICE attorney Antonio Estrada told Partida. Garcia said that in May, when ICE transferred 43 of his attorneys’ cases, 37% had already scheduled their trials, known in immigration court as merits hearings. In September, ICE transferred 31 of his program’s cases and 74% were at that final stage, he said.
ICE Otay Mesa Detention Center Detainees Transfers Asylum Attorneys Legal Representation
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