Attorneys warn of devastating consequences after Tacoma court blocks immigration lawyers from appearing remotely

Immigration attorneys across Oregon, Idaho and Alaska are scrambling to appear in person at the Tacoma Immigration Court after judges in mid-August stopped allowing them to appear remotely on behalf of clients detained at the regional detention center, attorneys said.

Oregon, Idaho and Alaska don’t have immigration detention centers and most immigrants detained by federal authorities in those states are taken to the regional detention center in Tacoma, Washington. Attorneys were previously allowed to make court appearances via video technology.

But beginning on Aug. 17, the Tacoma court began to implement what appears to be “an unwritten policy of summarily denying attorneys’ requests to appear by WebEx,” Nicolas Olano, an immigration attorney in Alaska, told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Immigration attorneys said they are having to change plans and dedicate significant time and resources to emergency travel with little notice in order to represent their clients.

“Most concerning is that, to my knowledge, this is not the result of a published regulation or a nationally announced (Executive Office for Immigration Review) policy. It appears to be a practice adopted by the Tacoma Immigration Court itself,” Olano said. “When an unwritten local practice substantially interferes with a detained person’s ability to be represented by the attorney that person selected, serious due-process and statutory right-to-counsel concerns arise.”

John Martin, a spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is housed in the U.S. Department of Justice and oversees immigration courts across the country, didn’t answer questions about the change in Tacoma.

The agency’s policy manual, which was last updated in March, does not include any requirements for attorneys to appear in person.

This wouldn’t be the first time that judges at the Tacoma court implemented a policy without a national regulation. In 2022, the court determined that it couldn’t allow longtime unlawful residents without criminal records to be released on bond. A U.S. District Judge last September found that longtime non-citizens who aren’t dangerous or a flight risk are not subject to mandatory detention. Despite the order, however, other immigration courts across the country have followed the Tacoma mandatory detention precedent.

The latest change, requiring attorneys to appear in person “is making it very, very difficult to represent anybody in detention while they’re increasing the amount of detained individuals there,” said Alicia Vial Beesley, an immigration attorney in Oregon.

Vial Beesley said the change could leave more detained individuals without legal representation by forcing attorneys to make difficult choices about which cases they can take.

“We can’t commit ourselves to being at every single hearing for our clients and we can’t represent people and not be at the hearings,” she said. “It’s forcing attorneys to decide to not take as many or even just not take any detained clients.”

While the change will mostly impact immigration attorneys in the Pacific Northwest, it could affect attorneys elsewhere in the country if their clients are transferred to Tacoma. Vial Beesley said she’s aware of an immigration attorney from Chicago who had to book airfare the night before her client’s hearing after she was denied the opportunity to appear online.

Olano, the immigration attorney in Alaska, said the “practical consequences are significant.” He said that during the first week of the policy change, a judge denied his request to appear remotely for a client’s Wednesday hearing just two days beforehand on Monday.

“I therefore had to stop what I was doing, purchase airfare, and travel from Anchorage to Tacoma on approximately two days’ notice simply so that my client could be represented at his hearing by the attorney he had chosen,” he said.

Since then, all of Olano’s requests to appear online have been denied, he said. He attempted to appear remotely on two occasions and was “sharply reprimanded and disconnected from the proceeding” without being able to discuss with his client what was happening, he said.

Olano and Vial Beesley said the court has suggested that attorneys associate themselves with local Washington immigration lawyers who can help cover their clients’ hearings, but they said that is not a workable solution.

“It imposes additional expense on detained individuals and their families,” Olano said, “and it substitutes or adds an attorney whom the client did not select and who may not have the same familiarity with the client, the family, the evidence, or the history of the case.”

Detainees generally hire local attorneys because that’s where their families and witnesses are and where their records and evidence are located. Local lawyers are also able to develop relationships with their clients’ families.

“When ICE transfers an Alaska resident to detention in Washington, that transfer should not effectively deprive the individual of the ability to continue being represented by the Alaska attorney of his or her choice,” Olano said.

Vial Beesley said there are not enough immigration attorneys who live near Tacoma to help cover the hearings for all people who are being represented by attorneys who live outside Washington.

“You don’t want to have somebody who doesn’t know your case go represent your client because they’re not going to know what your client needs,” she said.

Vial Beesley said it “makes a huge difference” when people who are detained have access to legal representation.

“It just gives ICE that much more power to violate due process because if there’s no attorneys, then they can terminate cases before somebody’s had an opportunity to present their case,” Vial Beesley said. “And if (detainees) don’t have an attorney to do an appeal, they don’t know what their options are.”

Olano said he believes an unwritten court practice shouldn’t be permitted to effectively determine whether people can retain their attorneys after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transfers them to a detention facility in Washington.

“If this practice continues, judicial review may be necessary,” he said.

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