January 18, 2026, 8:22 PM
Thousands of people have been arrested during ICE operations in Minneapolis over the past two weeks. Multiple attorneys allege that for some of those detained, including at least one U.S. citizen, the Department of Homeland Security is denying their constitutional right to see an attorney.
Four attorneys told ABC News they have been denied access to their clients at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where they are being held, which they say would violate 5th and 6th Amendment rights to due process and the right to consult with counsel.
“ICE agents were physically restricting me from seeing them,” said one immigration attorney, who asked not to be identified. “I stood outside the attorney visitation room for about four hours on Thursday, trying to see one of my clients who had been there for multiple days. I kept saying, you got to let me see my client. And they just kept repeating, we don't do attorney visitation.”
[...] All attorneys ABC News spoke to called the DHS denial a blatant lie, citing their own personal experiences as proof.
The immigration attorney also said access to an attorney by phone is different from access to an attorney in person.
“If ICE is trying to say, ‘Oh, it's fine, you can just have your client call you and you can talk and discuss their case over the phone,' that's absolutely unacceptable from an attorney-client standpoint. [Federal authorities] can and likely are listening in to those phone calls.”
[...] In recent months, other attorneys have raised similar claims in cities also grappling with a surge of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. In September in New York City, a federal judge ordered that DHS provide detainees a way to make confidential calls to their lawyers within 24 hours of being detained at a holding facility at 26 Federal Plaza.
In October, detainees at the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, filed a lawsuit claiming they were being held in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions as well as being denied confidential and efficient access to counsel.
“It hurts your head the types of legal violations they are engaging in and the games they’re playing,” said the criminal defense attorney. “It’s disgusting. This is not the America I love.”
Right to counsel has been recognized since the Warren Court, and it is even a part of the Miranda rights which persons arrested have to be given notice of, by set language. Do you guess that ICE people, conducting themselves as media report, read Miranda rights and accord their holding actions in line with them? I don't.
Smash the auto window, pull and torture the auto occupants with excessive force, handcuff them and force them into an unmarked vehicle - then read rights and honor those rights in practice? Get real. You've seen the reporting and video.
UPDATE: It is a happy circumstances that in the image at the top of the post, all the signs are "FEDERAL AGENT" since it is what they are, and before they were giving the police a bad name. Truth in negative advertising, all that, a good idea.