Experts: Migrant Influx Fuels Push For Right To Immigration Counsel

Marco Poggio, Law360, May 31, 2024

"What Judge Dana Leigh Marks saw countless times from her bench on the San Francisco Immigration Court were David-and-Goliath-type fights. Noncitizens, many of them having fled poverty in their home countries and having only modest educations, compete against U.S. government lawyers seeking to have them deported. "Most people are very nervous, if not terrified," she said. "They're dealing with a foreign culture, a foreign language, a system that they have likely no way to be familiar with." And the vast majority of them, said Judge Marks, who retired in 2021, did not have a lawyer on their side to help them. Over 65% of the nearly 4 million people in immigration court facing deportation last year did not have an attorney. The percentage of unrepresented people reached 74% among people — about 250,000 — who were ordered deported, according to data collected by the Executive Office for Immigration Review. In the face of these numbers, a movement to guarantee government-funded legal representation to noncitizens in deportation proceedings has been gaining ground, particularly in New York and California, where elected officials have already introduced bills that would codify the expansion into law." ... [Continue reading for quotes from experts Shayna Kessler, Lenni Benson, Lindsay Harris, Angélica Cházaro and Steve Yale-Loehr.]