Among the programs cut is the Legal Orientation Program, through which the Florence Project provides legal education and empowerment to detained adults in Arizona.
Phoenix, AZ – The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project denounces the Trump administration’s termination of the Legal Orientation Program, among other critical legal education services. This termination comes the very same week as the administration also requested $45 billion to open multiple new detention facilities across the U.S. and fewer than three weeks after they cut similar services for unaccompanied immigrant children.
“Taken together, these actions by the Trump administration represent a wholesale dismantling of any semblance of a fair court process for people facing deportation from the United States,” said Laura St. John, Florence Project Legal Director. “Without the LOP, hundreds of thousands of migrants will face the full force of the U.S. legal system without any sort of legal education or support, leading to disastrous and potentially deadly outcomes. The LOP is the bare minimum necessary to protect due process rights, and now the administration is slashing it at the same time it is massively expanding detention and deportation operations. To do both is cruel and a blatant violation of people’s due process rights, a bedrock of our legal system and our core values. Furthermore, organizations like the Florence Project, which have historically been the eyes and ears on the ground reporting on abuse and mistreatment in ICE detention, will face significant additional roadblocks in supporting people who want to file these types of reports. Simply put, the Trump administration is simultaneously trying to detain and deport more people than ever while also dismantling legal protections that have been in place for decades. Steps like these push the immigration system further into the shadows, where people are hidden away and deported without any due process.”
Through the LOP, which the Florence Project pioneered, legal advocates provide Know Your Rights presentations and individual legal intakes, as well as support for people representing themselves in immigration proceedings. Since its inception, the LOP has enjoyed bipartisan support because it has long been recognized to be an effective minimum requirement to safeguard due process for people in immigration detention and helps to make immigration court more efficient.
This is not the Trump administration’s first attack on the LOP. In January, they issued a stop work order, and we sued to challenge it. Though the stop work order was later rescinded, our litigation is still pending. Along with our partners, we will be renewing our motion for a Temporary Restraining Order in this litigation.