In a windowless holding area at the San Francisco International Airport, immigrant travelers detained by border agents are being restricted from speaking to their attorneys, creating a “black box” for their attorneys and slowing down their attempts to release them, several lawyers said.
Tae Heung “Will” Kim, 40, was held for seven and a half days in a holding room at SFO. The green card holder has lived in the United States since he was 5, and was detained after returning from his brother’s wedding in South Korea. He had a marijuana misdemeanor on his record, which triggered his detention.
Kim was allowed only a few short calls from the detention room, and they were to his wife. His lawyer, Karl Krooth, said border agents vetted Kim’s calls to ensure he was speaking only to her.
“It’s horrible,” said Krooth, who was only able to reach his client after he was transferred to a long-term detention center. “If someone is so isolated from their lawyer and they can’t tell their story, how can the lawyer even begin to develop a solution to the problem?”
Without access to his client, Krooth was restrained. He could not get his client’s signature or fingerprints to release records from government agencies and start building a case. Most importantly, he could not file a habeas petition for his client’s speedy release, one of the most common tactics attorneys use to release clients they argue are unlawfully detained.
“It’s like a black box for us attorneys,” said Christine Raymond, a lawyer who has represented people held at the airport for multiple days. She couldn’t speak with her clients held in airports despite multiple attempts.
Under the Trump administration, immigration agents have started actively targeting travelers nationwide. Dozens are held in airport detention centers inside airports, including one at SFO, revealed by the San Francisco Chronicle. Many of them are green card holders who have had a brush with the law, people who would not have been targeted in previous administrations.
The holding room at SFO, or the “in-transit lounge,” as airport officials call it, is tucked away inside the international terminal, out of sight of the 148,000 travelers passing through the airport every day. But it more resembles a jail than any traveler loyalty lounge, stocked with fresh fruit and chardonnay.
Lawyers, former detainees, and some elected officials consider the holding area a quasi-detention center. It is a place where international travelers, mostly green card holders who’ve had a brush with the law, are held after returning from a trip abroad.
The immigrants, many of whom have lived in the country for decades, like Kim, are often held for days while the government determines if they should be allowed to enter the country.
The San Francisco Chronicle revealed harsh conditions in which detainees were forced to sleep on bench-style couches and did not have access to an attorney to help them fight their case.
With little sleep and under poor conditions, travelers are interrogated with questions by immigration officials, according to Krooth, and can feel pressured into signing documents for temporary relief or answering questions they are not legally obliged to respond to, which can backfire.
“If they sign a piece of paper, they give up their green card,” said Ghassan Shamieh, an immigration attorney. But without counsel, they may not understand the repercussions at the moment.
Changing policies
Access to a lawyer at a port of entry
Because the international terminal is a port of entry, the law treats people held there as not yet having entered the United States, so non-citizens there do not have the same rights to even call an attorney that they would have once inside the country.
It is a longstanding policy of Customs and Border Protection to prohibit non-citizen travelers in their custody from accessing an attorney.
“An applicant for admission does not have a right to representation during primary or secondary inspection,” unless they are in custody and the focus of a criminal investigation, the agency told Mission Local. Border agents have some level of discretion over whether to allow calls to counsel, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
But under previous administrations, the border agency was rarely holding immigrants for extended periods.
In the past, when Customs and Border Protection had questions about whether an individual should be allowed into the country, immigrants would most often be granted parole (temporary entry) and then scheduled for an appointment to present their case to determine if they were legally allowed to stay.
And though airport detentions have become longer and more frequent, detaining people entering the country is not new, said Krooth. Customs has long had a holding room at the airport for detaining immigrants.
Krooth represented an Iranian man who was detained at SFO in 2017 during the first Trump administration when he signed an executive order barring travel from Iran and other muslim countries.
Marissa Hatton, a civil rights attorney at Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, said it was “no coincidence” that border agents are holding people without access to counsel: San Francisco has a strong network of pro bono attorneys nearby who could file petitions to stop them from being transferred to long-term detention.
The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly stated in response to Mission Local’s questions about arrests at SFO that it “reversed the Biden-era policy that allowed aliens unlawfully present in the United States to jet around our country. Under President Trump, DHS will no longer tolerate this.”
This, Krooth said, is just a continuation of the deterioration of freedom in this country, even for lawful permanent residents: Green card holders, who have had any brush with the law or issue with their status, previously free to travel around the world, are now often stuck in the country away from family and friends abroad for fear of detention.
“This country is a jail cell,” he said.
