New York Court Gave Every Detained Immigrant a Lawyer

Omar Siagha has been in the US for 52 years.

He's a legal permanent resident with three children.

He'd never been to prison, he says, before he was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention -- faced with the loss of his green card for a misdemeanor.

His brother tried to seek out lawyers who could help Siagha, but all they offered, in his words, were "high numbers and no hope" -- no guarantee, in other words, that they'd be able to get him out of detention for all the money they were charging.

Then he met lawyers from Brooklyn Defender Services -- part of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, an effort to guarantee legal representation for detained immigrants.

They demanded only one thing of him, he recalls: "Omar, you've got to tell us the truth."

But Siagha's access to a lawyer in immigration court is the exception.

There's no right to counsel in immigration court, which is part of the executive branch rather than the judiciary.

Often, an immigrant's only shot at legal assistance before they're marched in front of a judge is the pro bono or legal aid clinic that happens to have attorneys at that courthouse.

Those clinics have such limited resources that they try to select only the cases they think have the best shot of winning -- which can be extremely difficult to ascertain in a 15-minute interview.

But advocates and local governments are trying to make cases like Siagha's the rule, not the exception.

Soon, every eligible immigrant who gets detained in one of a dozen cities -- including New York, Chicago, Oakland, California, and Atlanta -- will have access to a lawyer to help fight their immigration court case. 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/9/16623906/immigration-court-lawyer