The New Immigration Legal Defense Fund Makes Colorado’s Justice System More Equitable
This interview was originally published on LinkedIn by Kit Taintor, Director of CDLE's Office of New Americans
In school, we all learn that the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution requires the U.S. government to provide free legal counsel to defendants in criminal cases. What we don’t learn is that immigrants in detention don’t have this right.
This lack of protection affects countless New Americans, including many Coloradans who have lived here for decades. We also saw its ramifications in 2018, when immigrant children separated from their parents appeared without representation in immigration proceedings.
That’s why Governor Jared Polis recently signed HB21-1194, which creates an immigration legal defense fund to be administered by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE). The funds will go to qualifying nonprofit organizations that provide legal advice, counseling, and representation for and on behalf of clients who are subject to an immigration proceeding.
I sat down with Genevieve Kessler, Director of State Advocacy for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), to discuss the problems the bill addresses and the importance of the fund. IRC provides opportunities for refugees, asylees, victims of human trafficking, survivors of torture, and other immigrants to thrive in America.
What problems will the Immigrant Legal Defense Fund address?
People working through the immigration process are not entitled to legal representation even though parts of the process take place before a judge. The stakes are incredibly high: you’re either allowed to stay here with your family or you must leave.
Some asylum seekers working through the process face life-or-death situations if they cannot effectively communicate and provide evidence of the risks they face in their home country. In immigration legal proceedings, individuals, including children, without representation must navigate a complicated system.
How does one effectively represent themselves in a court of law, possibly in a second language, and talk about trauma and fear -- especially if they are children? The traditional process of securing legal representation from a private attorney is also one that is riddled with biases. In what is often referred to as a “triage model,” an attorney will review cases before selecting which clients to represent, effectively deeming some worthy and others not. This process consistently works against immigrants who may have complicated legal histories or whose cases may be viewed as not capable of being won.
How will the Immigrant Legal Defense Fund help?
The fund helps increase access to legal representation. Universal representation through legal defense is a merits-blind approach that eliminates the triage model. And the results are proven to be effective: immigrants with legal representation are 10 times more likely to establish their right to remain in the U.S. than those without legal counsel. Not least of all, this fund indirectly saves the limited resources available in the immigration legal system by making immigration court proceedings more efficient, reducing detention costs by shortening times, which effectively reduces backlogs.
Why is the Immigrant Legal Defense Fund important?
Legal representation for asylum seekers and other individuals in the process can ensure people obtain the legal relief they are actually eligible for, and moreover, can be preventative in nature. An individual who has a lawyer is more likely to successfully make their claim and therefore less likely to face removal proceedings or detention. Families stay together and the trauma and pressure of adversarial hearings are avoided.
Universal representation through a legal defense fund preserves the right to due process that Americans hold so dear. Circumstances should not dictate access to legal representation, and the legal defense fund respects the dignity of every person, safeguarding the equitable application of justice.
Could you give me an overview of how the International Rescue Committee helps New Americans?
The IRC helps people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover, and rebuild their lives. Within the U.S. we have a network of 25 offices across 15 states which provide emergency services to resettled refugees and other vulnerable immigrant groups like asylum seekers and survivors of torture. This support includes everything from securing housing to enrolling in English classes to helping clients find a job to connecting them to immigrant legal services. (IRC is a DOJ accredited legal service provider.) The IRC works with clients for years, helping them secure training and education to advance in their career, connecting them with mental and health services in the community, and ultimately working with them to secure citizenship.
How did you get involved in working with New Americans?
I knew that my grandmother came from Cuba, but she rarely spoke about her experience as an immigrant who moved to the United States in her late 40s by herself. I do know that, In addition to the physical separation, she lost complete contact with her parents and siblings for a time.
Shortly before passing away, she was able to reconnect, and I ultimately carried that communication forward, eventually traveling there to meet my aunts and cousins. During each visit, I never failed to be struck by how privileged and lucky I was to be born here, and how different my life might have been had she not made the journey and the sacrifice. On my first visit, I asked my then 95-year-old great aunt what made my grandmother leave on her own. My grandmother had said that she “didn’t want her children to grow up as she did.”
When I started my career working at a congressional office in upstate New York, it was my job to work with constituents who were struggling through a situation with a federal agency. We received an overwhelming number of calls involving U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and immigration. Over eight years of doing the work, I learned how complicated the immigration process is and how challenging it is to succeed in court proceedings. Compounding this issue was the lack of pro bono and affordable attorneys in the area to provide the legal guidance so critical to working through the process successfully. Over and over, I heard constituents express the same reason as my grandmother for immigrating to or seeking safety in the U.S., which made me feel strongly about the importance of the work. I knew I wanted to continue it on a broader scale, and that led me to the IRC.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Most of us tie back our ancestry to someone who came here seeking a better life from another country. The folks working through immigration proceedings now are doing just that in a far more complicated system than our grandparents worked through.
The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Office of New Americans recently published a Request for Applications to identify qualified organizations to assist with immigrant legal defense in Colorado. Interested entities can find it on the state’s procurement site here and here. Type in 2022000110 to find the solicitation. Alternatively, it is titled ONA Immigration Legal Defense Fund Grant. Applications are due December 6 at 5 pm.