The Detention Education and Representation Program

The goal of the Detention Education and Representation Program (DERP) is to increase legal representation and assistance to immigrant detainees by conducting educational ”Know-Your-Rights” presentations to those who are in deportation and removal proceedings and would otherwise go unrepresented. These rights presentations aim to ensure that immigrants detained by DHS have access to legal services as well as information about their legal rights and potential legal relief against deportation.  DERP also provides direct legal representation to detainees before the Immigration Court and Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and recruits and trains pro bono attorneys and law students to assist with legal representation.

• Legal representation to detainees for their bond redetermination hearings, which releases them from detention.
• Representation of detained immigrants in cases before the Immigration Court, including those involving criminal conduct, by contesting grounds of deportability and inadmissibility and assisting with applications for relief against deportation and removal.
• Assistance and advice to detained asylum seekers with their applications.
• Consultations with individuals hoping to assist a relative or friend in detention to determine if the detainee would be eligible for our services and to inform them of other options if PAPA cannot assist them.
• Group Know-Your-Rights presentations about the legal rights and options immigrant detainees have.
• Education to unrepresented detained immigrants to go forward in their case on their own by distributing pro se materials via regular mail.
• Legal advice to detainees through mail correspondence.
• Petitions for release of long-term detainees with little or no chance of being deported.
  

• Currently, approximately 22,000 immigrants are detained on any given day.
• Across the U.S., more than half of immigrant detainees are held in local jails or prisons intended for criminal inmates.
• Most detainees in Central Texas are held in local jails, federal prisons, and contract facilities run by private corporations.
• Local jails contracted by the DHS to house detainees are not held accountable for DHS detention standards.
• DHS detention standards are not regularly implemented and enforced in facilities that do carry them.
• DHS detainees housed in local jails are under the direct control of jail officials and DHS monitoring of those jails is minimal.
• Detainees whose most serious offense is crossing the U.S. border without documents are housed in local jails and commingled with the criminal population, with no distinction in the treatment of criminal and non-criminal individuals.
• Many immigrants who have served their time from a criminal sentence continue to be detained and placed along side criminals who are still serving their time.
• Many immigrants continue to be detained for an indefinite period of time after they are ordered deported.
• 1996 immigration law reforms vastly expanded governmental authority to detain and deport immigrants regardless of legal status, causing much litigation over their constitutionality.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the government cannot continue to imprison certain deportable immigrants whose countries would no longer accept them.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has held that certain immigrants believing they are unlawfully detained have the right to have their deportation cases reviewed by a federal court.
• DHS continues to detain unaccompanied children for long periods of time.
• DHS detains around 5000 children annually.
• Many immigrants who are deported are barred from legally returning to the U.S. for at least 10 years. 

• Prolonged detention of at least 1100 people, most of whom were of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin and were being held on minor immigration charges.
• Refusal by the U.S. government to release the names, locations, or specific violations of those held on immigration violations.
• Ill-treatment, abuse in custody, and incommunicado of many individuals held on immigration violations.
• USA PATRIOT Act, which authorizes detention of immigrants suspected of involvement in terrorism or other similar activity without formal charges for seven days and allows indefinite detention of immigrants charged with immigration violations.
• Department of Homeland Security Act, which fails to provide adequate internal oversight and accountability of officers necessary to protect basic civil and human rights of immigrant detainees.
• Requirement of special registration by male non-permanent residents from certain nations, all but one of which are Arab and Muslim countries, which entails being photographed, fingerprinted, and interrogated by the government, and which have resulted in the detention of many immigrants for several days and harsh treatment.