Having a lawyer is the key to illegal immigrant children being able to stay in the U.S. — but fewer of them are appearing in court with lawyers, thanks to the recent surge of unaccompanied minors that has overwhelmed the system, according to new numbers released Tuesday by the Transactional Records Clearinghouse.
Nearly three-fourths of those with lawyers were allowed to stay, while 80 percent of those without lawyers were ordered deported, TRAC said.
The surge of immigrant children trying to cross the border without their parents began several years ago but peaked this summer. In addition to overwhelming border authorities, it also strained the legal community’s ability to provide lawyers to walk the children through the extraordinarily complex legal proceedings.
Up until last year, the majority of children did have lawyers. But in cases filed in March and April of this year, only about 15 percent had lawyers.
“Because these children are not entitled to a court-appointed attorney, and many unaccompanied children are without resources to hire one, the supply of attorneys with the necessary expertise, willingness and ability to provide their services without compensation clearly appears to have been inadequate to meet the growing need,” TRAC said in its report.
The Obama administration has tried to recruit more lawyers, announcing a Justice Department program to recruit volunteers and a Health and Human Services contract to pay for legal services.
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Those programs are both controversial, with critics on Capitol Hill saying they may run afoul of immigration law that could be read to prohibit taxpayer-funded lawyers for those going through deportation proceedings.
But the Congressional Research Service says the law only says immigrants are guaranteed a right to a lawyer, though if the government wants to pay for them, it can.
The difference between having a lawyer or not is tremendous.
TRAC said children with lawyers are allowed to stay 73 percent of the time, are ordered deported just 12 percent of the time, and the remaining 15 percent are allowed to leave under “voluntary departure” — which doesn’t carry some of the long-term immigration consequences.
Those without lawyers are ordered deported 80 percent of the time, TRAC said.
As of Oct. 31 there were 63,721 cases involving unaccompanied minors pending in the immigration courts, or 15 percent of the total. Less than a third of all of those cases, which span years of time, involved lawyers representing the child. In New York, which had the most cases, 43 percent had lawyers, while in Arlington, Virginia, which had the second-most cases, less than 20 percent were represented by lawyers.
On Oct. 31, HHS inked a $1.8 million contract with the Vera Institute of Justice to provide legal services for the children. The Washington Times has sought a copy of that contract under the Freedom of Information Act but has not yet received any documents.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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