Right to Counsel
Recent deaths at immigration detention centers in Georgia have made one fact disturbingly clear: detainees’ rights are being violated, with life and death consequences. These tragedies are not isolated incidents, but rather part of an ongoing trend in Georgia’s immigration system that consistently violates basic human rights, disregards detention standards, and leaves detained immigrants with […]
Since the reintroduction of family detention under the Obama administration, abuse of the mothers and children held in these facilities has run rampant. The family detention scheme has grown increasingly controversial not only because it has failed to provide safe and humane conditions for mothers and children, but also because the government has created arbitrary […]
When the White House issued its first Muslim travel ban, reports of noncitizens and citizens being held in airports’ secondary detention swirled. Individuals were being held for hours at a time without access to attorneys, even though scores of lawyers were attempting to reach them. Denial of access to counsel in secondary detention is not […]
In 2014, a legal challenge was mounted against the federal government for its failure to provide legal representation to indigent children in deportation proceedings. The case, F.L.B.. v. Lynch was brought by the American Immigration Council, American Civil Liberties Union, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Public Counsel, and K&L Gates LLP. Despite some victories over […]
Nationally, only 37 percent of all immigrants had legal representation, and only 14 percent of immigrants in detention had a lawyer. In a paper issued today, Access to Counsel in Immigration Court, Ingrid Eagly and Steven Shafer analyzed 1.2 million individual removal cases in immigration court between fiscal years 2007 and 2012. The report finds that […]
Last week, a federal court certified a class in a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s failure to provide legal representation to children in deportation proceedings. Several thousand children are estimated to be members of the class. This lawsuit, F.L.B. v. Lynch, was filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle. It charges the Departments of Justice, Homeland […]
A federal district court in Seattle heard arguments in a lawsuit on Thursday seeking to ensure that all children in immigration court have legal representation. The case received a flurry of attention when press reports revealed that an immigration judge deposed in the case said he had successfully taught three-year-olds immigration law. The focus of […]
Elvis Garcia is a migration counselor at the Catholic Charities Community Services of New York. He is also a former unaccompanied child who fled from his native Honduras in 2005 when he was 15 years old. Last week, Garcia and several others participated in a roundtable discussion sponsored by Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Services to […]
This week, the Washington Post ran a front page article drawing attention to the fact that our nation’s immigration courts are operating in crisis mode. The immigration courts are so overcrowded that judges are forced to make split-second decisions regarding complex legal issues, calling into question whether the court system is fairly administering justice. The […]
In criminal courts throughout the United States, the government provides defendants who cannot afford an attorney with a free public defender. In immigration courts, which are not part of the criminal court system, immigrants who are unable to hire a private attorney and cannot find a free legal service provider are forced to face off […]
