Day 40: What If Everyone in Immigration Court Got a Lawyer?

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash

Isn’t it strange how the things you’re thinking about somehow seem to find you?

Last week I was digging into DOJ statistics about outcomes in immigration court for people with and without representation, and the numbers were even more stark than I thought (as I laid out in this post).

This afternoon, I got an email from a colleague who told me about the Advancing Universal Representation Initiative sponsored by The Vera Institute of Justice. Their mission is “to establish a federal right to representation for all immigrants facing deportation.”

Last week I mentioned the effort toward national legislation (which I admitted I’m not bullish on). What is encouraging is seeing that there are already 50 publicly funded programs at the state or local level. In those jurisdictions, the state or municipality provides public funding for representation for people in immigration proceedings. That support is not truly “universal” - it’s often limited to certain priority categories of cases and only up to the amount of appropriations. But it’s critical support for some people at high risk without an attorney and it’s an important precedent.

According to Vera’s research, a large majority of U.S. voters - 67 percent - support Universal Representation. That includes more than half of likely Republican voters. And it makes sense when you know that study after study shows that well over 90 percent of people who have lawyers in immigration court will attend all their court hearings. If you believe in the rule of law, you want Universal Representation.

I’m so excited about this initiative. In addition to the policy advocacy piece, I’m eager to brainstorm ways that immigration law educators can support it on the training and mentoring front. Immigration court is a unique form of litigation (it’s actually agency adjudication), and immigration law and procedure are surprisingly complex, like the tax code. The wider Universal Representation spreads, the greater the need we will have for attorneys who’ve attained basic competency to represent respondents in immigration court. The solutions might be public, private, or cooperative. In short, Universal Representation is a perfect example of the kind of challenge that demands entrepreneurially minded legal professionals on all fronts!

(Okay, you can tell I’m excited about this initiative because I used two exclamation marks in this post, which is exactly two more than my usual writing style. Not that we’re counting.)