It’s been three months since the North Lake Correctional Facility reopened as an ICE detention center. IPR speaks to some attorneys who have been inside and in touch with detainees.

In mid-June, ICE opened an immigration detention center at North Lake Correctional Facility, a former prison north of Baldwin, in Lake County.

The detainees there are being processed for deportation. They can’t go in and out, but their attorneys can.

“I’ve been in the facility since it reopened. I think I’ve been inside four times,” said Richard Kessler, an immigration lawyer in Grand Rapids. He represents people in deportation cases. Some of his clients are currently detained in Baldwin.

“I was able to just arrive there and see the clients without pre-scheduling, which is what some facilities have,” he said.

Attorneys can visit seven days a week, and they can talk for as long as they want, which he said that’s as it should be in allowing people to see their attorneys.

He can’t speak to what the cells are like since he hasn’t actually seen them. But, he’s seen other parts of the facility.

“I’ve been in the kind of a lunch room area where we can be a visitation and some special visitation rooms. They’re typical, institutional-type rooms. I wouldn’t say they’re particularly dirty or anything. The temperature has been okay.”

He mentions the temperature, because, he said, immigration detention centers can be notoriously cold.

“I wish it was only a joke,” he said, but ICE facilities are referred to as “ICE boxes” down in Texas and in other parts of the U.S. In a different Michigan detention center, in Calhoun County, Kessler has found “it’s extremely cold most of the time in there. I always have to wear a special jacket or something.”

Read the full story on Interlochen Public Radio