Resource: Interpreting Injustice: The Department of Homeland Security's Failure to Comply with Federal Language Access Requirements in Immigration Detention

By: Katherine Beck

April 1, 2017

Harv. Latino L. Rev.

This Comment analyzes how DHS and ICE are noncompliant with federal language access policy, EO 13166, and Title VI. In Part II, I provide a background legal framework on language access and national origin discrimination and put immigration detention into that context. In Part I, I analyze how DHS and ICE have not taken reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to their programs and activities by LEP individuals in immigration detention centers across the United States based on the DOJ's four-factor test. In Part IV, I make recommendations for DHS and ICE to eliminate structural barriers to language access in immigration detention, and I suggest remedies that immigrants and advocates can use to hold the agencies accountable. First, ICE must increase general transparency by maintaining a complete public list of all its detention facilities and it must track language data of all its detainees. Next, DHS and ICE must revise their Language Access Plans to increase language access uniformity across all ICE facilities. Pursuant to the DOJ's four-factor test, ICE must provide free interpretation and translation services to LEP detainees. Finally, there must be greater oversight to effectively enforce EO 13166 so that DHS, ICE, and other noncompliant agencies are accountable to LEP individuals' civil rights.

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