Page 35 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

the need for qualified, trained, and free counsel continues to grow .11
Around the time that the Administration created Justice AmeriCorps, the Administration for Children and Families of the U .S . Department of Health and Human Services announced that they would appropriate some funds for full legal representation of children to those legal services organizations which had been providing some “Legal Orientation” programs inside the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) detention facilities managed by this agency . The full figures are unclear, but the program found the funds to authorize legal assistance to approximately 6,000 children .12
Yet even as the Administration was responding by trying to mobilize limited legal resources for children, the number of immigrant youth arriving grew dramatically . By the summer of 2014, nearly 4,000 children a month arrived at the Southern Border of the United States from three main countries: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador . The U .S . government began to describe the arrivals as a “surge” but also recognized the issue as a humanitarian crisis .13 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is charged with enforcing the immigration laws, and the Department of Justice (DOJ), which contains the Immigration Courts with its Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), entered into a memorandum of understanding that for all new child arrivals after May 1, 2014, the EOIR would schedule the removal (deportation) cases within twenty-one days of receipt of the charging document . This fast-tracked “priority docket” or “rocket docket” was created both in an effort to resolve the claims quickly to help those individuals who might qualify for protection and to respond to strong criticism within the U .S . Congress that the lengthy delays within the Immigration Court system created the impression in the children and mothers arriving that they would get “permisos” or work permits while their cases slowly worked through the court .14 In fact, few people qualify quickly for any type of work
11 In July 2014, the American Civil Liberties union (ACLu), in conjunction with the American Immigration Council, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Public Counsel, and K&L Gates LLP, filed suit in u.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, on behalf of unrepresented immigrant children in removal proceedings. This class-action lawsuit, J.E.F.M. v. holder, No. 2:14-cv-01026-TSZ, 2015 WL 9839679 (W.D. Wash. Apr. 13, 2015), is pending as of January, 2016. The plaintiffs’ request for an injunction was not granted and the case is proceeding with discovery and other pretrial motions. The District Court has refused class certification and the federal government also filed an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the court’s subject matter jurisdiction. In August of 2015, the District Court dismissed several of the plaintiffs from the suit because they had managed to secure some immigration relief or hired counsel. The District Court scheduled a hearing on the merits of the children’s constitutional claims to appointed counsel on May 2, 2016.
12 u.s. deP’T of healTh and human serV., office of refugee reseTTlemenT (orr), legal resource guide--legal serVice ProVider lisT for uac, reV. (February 9, 2015) available at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/orr/lrg_5_ legal_service_provider_list_for_uac_in_orr_care_e02_09_15.pdf. The provision of legal counsel funded by ORR is discussed by David Rogers, Under 16 and Ordered Deported- with No Lawyer, PoliTico (Nov. 18, 2015), http://www. politico.com/story/2015/11/under-16-and-ordered-deported-with-no-lawyer-215944#ixzz3yBkMrTOM.
13 Barack Obama, President of the u.S., Remarks by the President on Border Security and Immigration Reform (June 30, 2014), available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/30/remarks-president-border-security- and-immigration-reform.
14 Testimony given to house Subcommittee hearings in July 2014. See Oversight of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Hearing Before H.R. Comm. on the Judiciary, 113th Cong. 9-23 (2014) (statement of The honorable Leon Rodriguez, Director, u.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), available at http://judiciary.house.gov/_cache/files/ e7d4d5f8-2139-4c56-8419-56962569569a/113-99-88919.pdf. Congressman Goodlatte sent a letter to President Obama demanding an explanation of why the administration said most of the children would be sent back and cited the authors’ letter to the New York Times that many of the children would in fact qualify for relief. Lenni B. Benson & Claire R. Thomas, Lawyers for Immigrant Youths, To the Editor, n.y. Times, May 27, 2014, http://www. nytimes.com/2014/05/28/opinion/lawyers-for-immigrant-youths.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0. See also Letter from Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Congressman, Committee On The Judiciary Chair, to Barack Obama, President of the united States (June 24, 2014), available at http://judiciary.house.gov/_cache/files/c0ad486f-e935-4ba0-9dfc- f1d4acc781c0/062414bguamlettertoobama.pdf.
Specific Areas for Reform: Immigration
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