NYC funds public defender system for immigrants

Source: AP

NEW YORK (AP) — Poor New York City residents who have been detained in the immigration system and are facing deportation will now have legal representation to help them through the complicated proceedings after city lawmakers voted to fund a program advocates say is the first of its kind in the country.

Lawmakers approved $4.9 million for the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project as part of the $75 billion budget passed early Thursday covering the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. The funding allows the initiative, which started as a $500,000 pilot program last year, to cover all eligible immigrant city residents appearing in immigration courts in New York City or the New Jersey cities of Elizabeth and Newark.

While the criminal justice system has a guaranteed right to representation, that is not the case in civil proceedings like immigration cases.

But immigration law is incredibly complex, and it is exceedingly difficult for immigrants to succeed in making a case for themselves — even if they have legal grounds for one — if they don't have an attorney, said Oren Root, of the Vera Institute of Justice, which is coordinating and overseeing the project. He said data showed immigrants without attorneys won their cases about 3 percent of the time, while those with attorneys were much more likely to be successful.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/nyc-funds-public-defender-system-immigrants

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Due process is an American value. Fitting for this kind of program to begin in the city that has the Statue of Liberty.