Justice Department halts legal aid for detained immigrants facing deportation

A program advising immigrants in deportation proceedings comes to a halt.

The Department of Justice will temporarily halt and review a program providing detained immigrants with legal advice and assistance, the latest move in a series of crackdowns on immigration and immigrant rights more broadly by the Trump administration.

The Washington Post’s Maria Sacchetti reported Tuesday night that the Executive Office for Immigration Review intends to “conduct efficiency reviews which have not taken place in six years.” The implications will be immediate: officials told the Vera Institute of Justice that the organization’s government-backed Legal Orientation Program (LOP) will be paused beginning this month. Vera works with the 18 other nonprofits to administer information sessions for thousands of immigrants every year, assisting some 53,000 immigrants in 2017 across numerous states including those bordering Mexico.

The Justice Department established in 2012 that the Legal Orientation Program has saved the government $17.8 million a year and offered “a cost-effective and efficient way to promote due process” in addition to cutting detention time by an average of six days. But an immigration official told the Post that the government is conducting the audit to determine whether the program offers duplicate services that could be cut in a cost-saving measure.

https://thinkprogress.org/immigrants-legal-services-justice-4181fafbe135/


Hey Sessions, this coming January the public is going to show you due process for lying in front of Congress





November 2018 cannot get here fast enough