In northern Oregon, just before dawn in October 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested and shackled two farmworkers on their way to work. The man and woman were Guatemalan citizens who spoke no English and very little Spanish. They spoke Mam, an Indigenous Mayan language.

Despite the man trying to tell an ICE officer as much, he was not provided with an interpreter, according to his sworn declaration. Suspected of being in the country illegally, they were detained in an immigration processing center and signed papers they did not understand. They were released later with ankle monitors and placed under an intensive supervision program requiring frequent check-ins at an ICE office in Portland.

Their experience points to a problem that reaches far beyond Oregon.

The civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution broadly apply to everyone in the U.S., regardless of immigration status. Courts have held that the right to an interpreter is protected by the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to a fair trial – including understanding court proceedings and communicating with counsel. It’s also protected by the Fifth and 14th amendments, which state that no person can be deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process.”

But in a multilingual society, these rights collide with how little most Americans, including law enforcement and court professionals, are taught about language itself. Speakers of minority languages, or languages that are not commonly used in schools, courts or government, are often disadvantaged by this lack of linguistic awareness. This can even affect nonstandard English speakers or people who speak a variety of English that differs from the mainstream varieties privileged in courts and schools.

Imagine an English speaker detained abroad and forced to navigate a criminal trial in a language they do not understand. Most people would recognize that as fundamentally unfair, but speakers of minority languages often face this reality in U.S. courtrooms.

These failures are poised to multiply. Early in his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order designating English as the official U.S. language and rescinding a 2000 executive order that directed federal agencies to provide language access – despite the fact that around 25 million people in the........

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