With Waves Of Migrants, A Sea of Legal Problems
By Julian Aguilar August 22, 2015
EL PASO — As images of Central American minors huddled on detention center floors or crowded atop a northbound freight train are being replayed around the country, Texas immigration lawyers are scrambling to coordinate representation for the migrants.
Unlike the criminal justice system, in which defendants are guaranteed representation, immigration law falls under the civil justice system and does not give undocumented immigrants that benefit. A migrant may be able to afford an attorney or find one willing to work pro bono, but lawyers say most migrants have to do without counsel. |
Program Providing Legal Help to Immigrants Will Expand Beyond New York City
By liz robbins May 13, 2015
New York City’s melting pot has been boiling over in the larger metropolitan area.
Long Island, the lower Hudson Valley and northern New Jersey, home to thousands of recently arrived unaccompanied minors and older immigrants, have nearly as many people eligible for legal services as does the city. But outside the city, there has been a shortage of lawyers to serve those potential clients. Enter the second class of the Immigrant Justice Corps, an ambitious, still-developing fellowship program begun in New York City last year by Robert A. Katzmann, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Starting this fall, the Justice Corps will place 11 recent law school graduates and two college graduates out of 35 new fellows in surrounding counties. |
As Immigrants Settle Beyond City Limits, Help Is Hard to Find
By Kirk Semple february 15, 2015
ELKIS RIVERA, 14 years old, sat in the Los Angeles immigration courtroom, in a black coat and purple scarf, shaking with fear.
When Belkis was 6, the gang that controlled her neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, killed her grandmother and then her uncle, and demanded that her brothers join as lookouts. Belkis’s mother took the boys and fled to the United States, leaving Belkis behind with family. When the gang started stalking and threatening Belkis, then 13, she followed, making the terrifying six-month journey across Mexico by herself. She was caught by the Border Patrol last September, while crossing into the United States. Now she faced one more trauma: America’s judicial system. In a nation that prides itself on the fact that everyone accused of a crime — murderers, rapists — has the right to a lawyer, undocumented immigrants, even when they are unaccompanied children, are not entitled to a public defender. Although some children are represented by pro bono lawyers or, for the few whose families can afford it, private lawyers, it’s estimated that more than half of them go to court alone. These children — some as young as 2 years old — have no one to help them make the case that they should not be deported. |
Child Migrants, Alone in Court
By Sonia Nazario April 10, 2013
José was looking for peace and quiet, in addition to work, when he decided to settle in the hinterlands of upstate New York 14 years ago. “A lot of farmland and trees,” he recalled, speaking in Spanish. “It reminded me of my village in Mexico.”
But he quickly learned that being poor and undocumented and living far from the well-established immigrant networks found in the nation’s big cities made life especially difficult. There was the absence of public transportation (he cannot legally drive), the scarcity of lawyers with immigration expertise and a feeling of isolation fed by his inability to speak English and the lack of opportunities to learn it. “It’s a big challenge,” said José, 38, who works on a dairy farm in Livingston County, where he lives with his wife and four children, about 230 miles from New York City. “We’re a forgotten community in terms of service.” (He asked that his last name not be published because of his immigration status.) Such challenges are a fact of life for the large and growing population of immigrants across the country who have bypassed traditional gateway cities like New York and San Francisco to settle instead in suburban and rural areas. In 2013, about 61 percent of foreign-born residents of the nation’s most-populous metropolitan areas lived in the suburbs, up from 56 percent in 2000, according to the Brookings Institution. In New York State, the foreign-born population living outside New York City has more than doubled since 1990 and now stands at about 1.3 million people, according to the latest Census Bureau figures. |
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