Trump Policies Play Out In Courtrooms Like This One

The Courthouse News has an excellent report about a San Francisco courtroom it calls a “microcosm” of how the nation’s immigration deportation system is reacting to President Trump’s new policies. The CN explains that the courtroom is “… where immigrants held in detention centers miles away speak to judges through interpreters and flat-screen TVs.” The report details cases from “… about 1,500 immigrants detained in four facilities within 300 miles of San Francisco, where deportation cases are tried and decided by 19 immigration judges at two courthouses.”

The report also backgrounds the effect of having legal representation: “A recent study by the University of Pennsylvania Law Review found detained immigrants with an attorney were four times more likely to be released on bond, 11 times more likely to seek asylum or other relief from deportation, and twice as likely to successfully obtain the relief they sought. According to that same study, 37 percent of immigrants have no legal representation in removal cases, a proportion that shrinks to 14 percent for those held in detention.”

Officials are trying to provide legal representation for immigrants facing deportation, but given the years-long backlog and budgets, it seems an uphill struggle. Immigration courts are considered civil courts, so they do not carry the same “right to an attorney” that criminal courts have.

Read the story here: https://www.courthousenews.com/advocates-push-lawyers-immigrant-detainees/

Trump’s Immigration Plan Brings Several Early Legal Challenges

Demonstrators gather outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Sunday to protest President Trump’s executive order on immigration. (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post) (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)

Demonstrators gather outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Sunday to protest President Trump’s executive order on immigration. (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post) (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)

President Trump’s immigration orders over the weekend brought both protests and legal challenges, with several judges ordering halts to the program and scholars offering opinions. The Washington Post had a good article outlining the civil concerns, including listing some of the groups opposing the move:

“… the American Civil Liberties Union, which won the injunction from a New York judge Saturday, immigrant legal aid societies, public-interest groups and the alliance of 16 state attorney generals.”

The story also predicted more challenges under both constitutional grounds and legal decisions over decades.

See the WaPo story here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/scholars-many-more-legal-challenges-likely-for-trumps-executive-order-on-immigration/2017/01/29/2801ffee-e64b-11e6-bf6f-301b6b443624_story.html?utm_term=.569746bb8037

The Key To Immigration? Hiring An Attorney

Wilfredo Allen, center, consults with Marlene Hasner and Camila Correal in his Miami office. Photo Credit: 10/30/16 Miami Herald Report

Wilfredo Allen, center, consults with Marlene Hasner and Camila Correal in his Miami office. Photo Credit: 10/30/16 Miami Herald Report

A Miami Herald report is adding fuel to the argument that would-be immigrants with legal representation fare much better than those without. The newspaper focuses on an individual case that “… seems to prove the theory among immigration lawyers that foreign nationals represented by an attorney in immigration court proceedings have a better chance of winning their case than those left to their own devices. But the first formal study on legal representation of foreign nationals in immigration proceedings actually proves the validity of that theory.”
 
“By reviewing over 1.2 million deportation cases decided across the United States over a six-year period, this report provides an urgent portrait of the lack of counsel in immigration courts,” according to the study issued by the American Immigration Council. “In it, we reveal that 63 percent of all immigrants went to court without an attorney. Detained immigrants were even less likely to obtain counsel — 86 percent attended their court hearings without an attorney. For immigrants held in remote detention centers, access to counsel was even more severely impaired, only 10 percent of immigrants detained in small cities obtained counsel.”
 
You can read the Herald story here: 

Yale Law Students Organize To Aid Refugee Families

Photo Credit: Yale Law School Report, 6/29/16

Photo Credit: Yale Law School Report, 6/29/16

The story begins like this: “Cruz Montano and her daughter were two of the thousands of women and children who were taken to an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas after crossing the border into the U.S. seeking refuge. They were also among the earliest clients of a newly formed organization called the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), founded at Yale Law School.”
 
The Yale Law website backgrounds that “… Conchita Cruz ’16, Swapna Reddy ’16, Dorothy Tegeler ’16, and Liz Willis ’17 co-founded ASAP in the Spring of 2015 to respond to the unmet legal needs of Central American refugee families, both while detained in border detention facilities and after release. The project started as a volunteer effort funded by the Gruber Project for Global Justice and Women’s Rights at Yale when the co-founders traveled with fellow law students to the Texas detention center. There, they filled a gap in legal services by representing a Honduran mother at her trial, helping to secure her and her 8-year-old son’s legal status and release from the facility.”
 
Studies have indicated that refugees with legal help are many times more likely to gain residency status in the U.S.
 
Read about their effort here: