La justicia perdida en la traducción (artículo en inglés)
Michelle Gong, Asistente de investigación de CCL
In October 2017, Warren Demesme, a Black man in Louisiana, was accused of sexual assault and subjected to police interrogation. During questioning, Demesme stated, “If y’all think I did it, I want a lawyer, dog.” The Louisiana Supreme Court declined to suppress his statements, interpreting his plea as ambiguous—suggesting, bizarrely, that he might have been asking for a "lawyer dog" rather than invoking his constitutional right to counsel.
This decision became a viral sensation, but it also exposed a critical issue: how the legal system weaponizes language to deny rights, especially for marginalized communities. Language barriers and cultural expressions, particularly among Black Americans and immigrant communities, often become pretexts for dismissing fundamental legal protections. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in Utah v. Strieff warned that these failures disproportionately harm people of color, eroding trust and perpetuating systemic inequality.
This issue is even more pronounced in the treatment of undocumented immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Reports from detention centers reveal that detainees are often denied access to interpreters during interrogations, hearings, and legal proceedings. In one case, a Guatemalan asylum seeker who only spoke Mam, an Indigenous language, was coerced into signing deportation paperwork written in Spanish—a language he did not understand. Similar incidents have been reported at ICE facilities in Texas and Arizona, where detainees are misled into waiving their rights under the guise of “expedited processing.”
The impending second act of the Trump administration will only exacerbate these issues. Recent executive orders expanding immigration enforcement have created an environment where language barriers are weaponized to silence immigrant voices. In Mississippi, undocumented workers arrested during a massive ICE raid in 2019 described being interrogated without access to interpreters. Some were forced to rely on fellow detainees with limited English proficiency, leading to miscommunications that had devastating legal consequences. These examples highlight how the criminal justice system uses language as a tool of exclusion, framing non-English speakers as inherently untrustworthy or undeserving of due process.
Angela Davis has long argued that such systems of exclusion are not accidental—they are built to sustain white supremacy and systemic inequality. The experiences of immigrant detainees and cases like Demesme illustrate how language and race intersect in maintaining these oppressive structures. Davis’s critique of the prison-industrial complex extends to immigration detention, where the same dynamics of racialized control and dehumanization are at play. For undocumented immigrants, the failure to provide interpreters is not just an oversight—it’s a deliberate tactic to undermine their ability to defend themselves.
The implications are profound. The erosion of language rights in the legal system reflects a broader failure of justice. Justice Sotomayor’s dissent resonates louder than ever: the systemic disregard for constitutional protections is not just a legal flaw but a moral one. If the courts can so easily dismiss the plea of a Black man or an immigrant asking for an interpreter, what protections does anyone truly have?
The time for action is now. Injustice doesn’t just happen in the courtroom—it’s embedded in the very language of American law.
