Santa Clara County to fund legal aid for Bay Area ICE detainees

Santa Clara County will be the first in the region to fund efforts to release every Bay Area resident unlawfully detained by ICE.

County leaders are signing a roughly $200,000 agreement with La Raza Centro Legal, a nonprofit legal clinic based in San Francisco, to expand the Bay Area Habeas Network, whose attorneys work to secure habeas corpus proceedings for people in the custody of federal immigration authorities. Habeas corpus is a legal procedure requiring government officials to justify the detention of someone in their custody before a judge. Advocates said the county funding will help expand the number of attorneys to file habeas petitions.