Deportation Without [Adequate] Representation « The PSLawNet Blog

Deportation Without [Adequate] Representation « The PSLawNet Blog

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The report surveyed judges in five immigration courts and found shoddy lawyering widespread. According to the judges’ responses, in nearly half the New York cases, immigrants who had lawyers received inadequate representation.

Worse, a huge number of immigrants in New York have no representation at all. Although poor defendants in criminal courts are entitled to court-appointed lawyers, people in immigration courts are not. Over all, immigrants appeared in court without a lawyer in nearly 15,000 cases (27 percent of the total) between October 2005 and July 2010. About two-thirds of immigrants in detention were lawyerless. Other jurisdictions provided even less access to counsel: 79 percent of those arrested and transferred to immigration detention in other states lacked attorneys.

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