With few lawyers, child migrants fight alone in court to stay in the U.S.

Ivette Feliciano, PBS Newshour, Nov. 8, 2015 - "Unlike criminal court, in immigration court, the federal government is not required to provide lawyers to defendants who cannot afford them — not even unaccompanied minors like Jessica.  But whether or not they have a lawyer makes a big difference in immigration court.  Seventy-three percent of immigrants under 21 with lawyers are allowed to stay in the U.S. That’s five times higher than the 15 percent of children without lawyers who are allowed to stay.  So far this year, there have been 19,000 immigrants under 21 who filed new requests to stay, and 62 percent of them don’t have a lawyer.  Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, began representing Jessica last year as a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and other groups against ORR, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

AHILAN ARULANANTHAM: The notion that a 10-year-old boy from El Salvador who can barely speak any English can advance the constitutional arguments that trained lawyers who have gone to law school would make in federal court is absurd.

The plaintiffs say requiring minors to appear in court whether they have a lawyer or not violates the constitution’s Fifth Amendment right to due process."