The U.S. Department of Homeland Security must face a lawsuit lodged by advocacy groups alleging detained immigrants are being denied proper access to counsel, a D.C. federal judge ruled, finding that the legal services organizations adequately alleged "a close relation" to the third parties in the lawsuit.

In an opinion and order issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found that the legal services organization Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project has standing to bring claims against DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on behalf of detained immigrants, denying the government's dismissal motion, which was lodged more than two years ago.

"Although the second amended complaint does not provide full factual development of FIRRP's allegations, the allegations that it does contain are sufficient to establish FIRRP's standing and satisfy the pleading requirements," Judge Kollar-Kotelly stated in her opinion.

FIRRP represents immigrants detained at the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Center. The group first filed claims alongside Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, a group representing detainees at River Correctional Center in Ferriday, Louisiana, and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, which represents clients detained at Texas' Laredo Processing Center.

With an initial complaint first brought in October 2022, FIRRP secured a preliminary injunction against the government the following February, when the court found a likelihood that the organization would succeed on its claims that immigrants detained at Florence were unlawfully denied access to legal counsel. However, similar motions brought by ISLA and RICELS failed, with the court determining they had not shown a clear likelihood of success.

The court severed the suits in July 2023, transferring the RICELS suit to the Southern District of Texas, the ISLA suit to the Western District of Louisiana and a fourth suit, brought by a group seeking to represent detainees at Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, to the Southern District of Florida.

With the preliminary injunction in place and after "several" time extensions, Judge Kollar-Kotelly said in her opinion, in late August 2023 the Florence facility eventually reported it had installed 24 soundproof booths for detainees to meet virtually with counsel and implemented procedures for detainees to access the booths.

The judge found that resolving the issue at the Florence facility was not enough to end the suit.

"FIRRP's success at the preliminary injunction stage is merely one step in the litigation," Judge Kollar-Kotelly stated. "As the Supreme Court recently emphasized in Lackey v. Stinnie, such success is 'a transient victory at the threshold of an action' that is 'tentative [in] character, in view of the continuation of the litigation to definitively resolve the controversy.'"

The government put forth three arguments in its September 2023 dismissal motion, first telling the court that FIRRP's clients have access to counsel and therefore the suit fails to state a claim.

Second, DHS and ICE said the suit was insufficiently pled, arguing FIRRP could not "identify any client who was injured by defendants' procedures in any actual proceeding or show that FIRRP clients are hindered in bringing their claims as first-party litigants."

Finally, the defendants stated that Rehabilitation Act claims must fail because FIRRP had not offered testimony from counsel or detainees in support of its claims.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly determined that third-party standing applies to FIRRP, because the organization had shown that "the barriers to attorney access that FIRRP has alleged are direct impediments to its mission, and FIRRP has organizational standing to challenge those barriers" and that its attorney-client relationship was enough to prove a "close relation to" the parties whose rights it was seeking to assert.

FIRRP may be permitted to pursue claims on its clients' behalf, Judge Kollar-Kotelly found, because it had also shown that its clients face "hindrance" in advocating on their own behalf.

The second amended complaint includes plenty of allegations stating FIRRP clients have been blocked from accessing counsel, the judge found, allowing the suit's Fifth Amendment due process argument to stand.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly determined FIRRP had added specific and factual allegations sufficient for its Rehabilitation Act claim to proceed — alleging the government was denying reasonable accommodations for disabled detainees to access counsel. Whether the allegations will stand up to scrutiny goes beyond the judge's abilities at the motion-to-dismiss stage, she said, allowing the claim to survive.

"We are pleased that the court has issued the order dismissing the government's motion to dismiss, and that the case can proceed," FIRRP's counsel from the American Civil Liberties Union, Eunice Cho, said in an email. "Access to counsel, and adherence to constitutional protections in detention, has become even more critical as the government expands its efforts to detain and deport immigrants in Arizona and nationwide."

A Department of Justice spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

As for the cases that were severed from the FIRRP suit, the Texas suit was dismissed in September 2023, the Florida claims were dismissed without prejudice following a stipulation in February 2024 and the Louisiana claims were likewise dropped without prejudice in June 2024.

RICELS, together with FIRRP, sued the Trump administration this February to challenge a border closure and the suspension of asylum claims. That suit is ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is represented by Eunice Cho, Kyle M. Virgien, Arthur B. Spitzer and Jared G. Keenan of the American Civil Liberties Union, Emma Winger and Suchita Mathur of the American Immigration Council, and Stacey J. Rappaport, Linda Dakin-Grimm, Andrew Lichtenberg and Danielle Lee Sauer of Milbank LLP.

The agencies are represented by Lauren E. Fascett of the DOJ's Office of Immigration Litigation.

The case is Americans for Immigrant Justice et al. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security et al., case number 1:22-cv-03118, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

--Additional reporting by Britain Eakin and Emily Lever. Editing by Robert Rudinger.