Right to Counsel
Nothing is a better predictor of an immigrant’s success in their immigration case, than whether or not they have access to competent legal assistance. However, the U.S. Government has at times made the hurdles to enlisting legal help insurmountable. One such example came in March 2017, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) banned a legal […]
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral argument on Tuesday in C.J.L.G. v. Sessions – a case that raises grave due process concerns for indigent immigrant children. At issue is whether an immigrant child in deportation proceedings has a right to an appointed attorney when he cannot afford to hire one himself. For years, […]
The recent trend of broadly labeling unaccompanied immigrant children as criminals and gang members is just the latest in a series of attacks on some of the most vulnerable individuals in the U.S. immigration system. In reality, most immigrant children from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are fleeing the very gangs they are purportedly members […]
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a strong rebuke to the government’s years-long effort to strip detained immigrant children of the right to a bond hearing in immigration court. The 3-0 decision, authored by Judge Reinhardt on Wednesday, came in a case involving the 1997 Flores settlement which requires the government to comply with […]
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 […]
