You have to have money to fight deportation. Most undocumented immigrants do not have the kind of money to hire a good lawyer. In an unfortunate paradox.... the city with the most lawyers gives little help to those about to be deported.
A New York judge named Robert A. Katzmann has begun a small program to help with this problem...
In City of Lawyers, Many Immigrants Fighting Deportation Go It Alone
By NINA BERNSTEINNew York Times
Published: March 12, 2009
In the heart of Manhattan, amid one of the greatest concentrations of legal muscle in the world, hundreds of New York’s immigrant poor are locked up with no access to a lawyer as they fight deportation.
Robert A. Katzmann, a federal judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, believes that fact alone should summon the city’s legal profession to do more volunteer work in the immigration court system, where no defendant has the right to a court-appointed lawyer, and some of the most vulnerable end up in the hands of fly-by-night operators who bungle cases wholesale...
...What started as a lecture to the city’s bar association two years ago and quietly evolved into a 7:45 a.m. “study group,” has turned into a movement that filled an amphitheater at Fordham Law School on Wednesday afternoon, drawing high-powered lawyers, judges, academics and city officials who talked bluntly about a dysfunctional system and brainstormed into the night.
“Justice should not depend on the income level of immigrants,” Judge Katzmann told the group at the outset of this “working colloquium,” seen by some as a model for circuits around the country. Studies show immigrants with legal representation are three to four times more likely to win their case, yet nationwide, only about 35 percent have any kind of lawyer. With 39 percent of the Second Circuit’s caseload now made up of immigration appeals, he said in an interview, he considers his effort part of any judge’s responsibility to improve the administration of justice... link to complete article
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