"In mid-August, Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked up and detained Elias Gonzales, along with five other immigrants, during a routine workday in East Oakland. Gonzales spent the next two months at a Tacoma, Washington detention facility - an experience that his attorney, Abby Sullivan Engen, said left him traumatized. Gonzales - a pseudonym - is a speaker of an indigenous Mayan language, and struggles with a hearing problem. Within the facility, ICE failed to provide an interpreter to explain legal documents or other procedures, leaving him isolated and unsure of what was happening. Gonzales may be legally deaf, according to his attorney."
"Before Gonzales was arrested and Sullivan Engen learned of his case through the rapid response hotline, his family had hired a private attorney. That attorney also ignored Gonzales's specialized needs, conducted the consultation in Spanish, and filed his asylum application in Spanish, although Gonzales' understanding is limited in that language. As a result, the private attorney failed to capture critical details about Gonzales's asylum claim as an indigenous person fleeing his home country. "[The claim] doesn't tell the most important aspects of his story," said Sullivan Engen, co-director of the immigrants' rights practice at La Raza Legal Center in Oakland."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Elias Gonzales during a workday in East Oakland and held him for two months at a Tacoma detention facility. Gonzales speaks an indigenous Mayan language and has a hearing problem, and the facility failed to provide an interpreter or explain legal procedures, leaving him isolated. A private attorney had conducted a consultation and filed an asylum application in Spanish despite Gonzales's limited Spanish, omitting crucial indigenous-specific details. Language access failures and inadequate representation intensified trauma and risked undermining the asylum claim. A habeas petition secured his release on Oct. 28.
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