De Blasio Under Fire For Plan To Keep Some Immigrants Out Of Legal Aid Program
moncler outlet uk For the last three years, New York City has footed the bill for lawyers to defend certain immigrants facing deportation under a unique program that other cities have begun to emulate. moncler outlet uk
But as the June 30 deadline to finalize the city’s budget approaches, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) moncler outlet store is pressing the city to keep some immigrants out of the program based on their criminal histories.
moncler factory outlet The debate pits buy moncler jackets de Blasio, who has cheap moncler sale positioned himself as one of the country’s leading progressive politicians, against Democrats on the city council, immigrant rights advocates and legal assistance groups who say the mayor is injecting a new form of discrimination into a successful program that primarily helps detained immigrants. moncler factory outlet
moncler cheapmoncler outlet store De Blasio’s critics say the city’s legal aid is all the more important under the Trump administration. Since President Donald Trump took office, the number of immigration arrests has risen by nearly moncler mens jackets 40 percentcompared to the same time period last year. moncler outlet store
moncler jacket sale “The ability to provide due process and an attorney to everybody going through deportation proceedings is the right thing to do,” Luis Mancheno, an immigration lawyer at the Cardozo School of Law, told HuffPost. “For cheap moncler jackets years I have been able to talk to family members and monlcer down jackets to tell them that if your family is locked up facing deportation proceedings, New York City has your back and will help defend the case. That’s a promise I could not make if these restrictions went into effect.” moncler jacket sale
cheap moncler More than half of the city council including Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito (D) opposes de Blasio’s proposed changes as well. cheap moncler
cheap moncler coats “We are concerned that the exclusion you propose will not only undermine our city’s commitment to due process for all but will also perpetuate the failures and racial disparities that pervade our criminal justice system,” 27 council members wrote to de Blasio this week, according to the New York Times. law, immigrants facing deportation may seek a lawyer in civil court, but don’t have the right to have one provided at no cost, like they do in criminal court. This applies to everyone even children and the mentally handicapped. cheap moncler coats
moncler outlet online But under the New York Immigrant Family Unity Program, which has been fully operational for the last three years, the city itself pays to provide lawyers to immigrants in detention who can’t afford them. The program does not currently make distinctions about which immigrants can access a lawyer. Thus cheap moncler outlet far, it has helped nearly 2,500 people, according to organizers. moncler outlet online
cheap moncler jackets Both de Blasio and the Democrat led city council have already agreed to keep funding the program. The current draft of the city budget boosts funding for the program by 50 percent to $16 million, and the state government bolstered it with an addition $4 million that will go toward assisting people detained in upstate New York. cheap moncler jackets
moncler outlet sale The ability to provide due process and an attorney to everybody going through deportation proceedings is the right thing to do, moncler outlet sale
moncler sale outlet Immigration attorney Luis Mancheno moncler sale outlet
But that money isn’t enough to provide a lawyer to everyone. And with the number of deportation cases jumping, the de Blasio administration says it should prioritize the cases the city chooses to defend which would mean no longer providing representation to everyone in detention who needs it, as the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project currently does.
cheap moncler outlet Under de Blasio’s proposal, anyone convicted of a list of some 170 crimes in the last five years wouldn’t qualify for representation. The list is the same one that New York City created in 2014 to determine which immigrants it will hold on behalf of ICE when the agency issues “detainer” requests. cheap moncler outlet
cheap moncler jackets sale “The increase in defense funding is based not just on deportation, but on the increase of people with low level criminal offenses or no criminal histories,” Nisha Agarwal, New York City’s commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, told HuffPost. “That’s a very scary trend for us and so we’re really prioritizing.” cheap moncler jackets sale
moncler jackets outlet Agarwal described the limits moncler outlet online on access to the program as justified by the fact that New York City’s legal defense fund for immigrants is likely the largest in the country. In addition to the cheap moncler coats $16 million for NYIFUP, the budget draft includes a similar amount of money for other immigrant legal services. moncler jackets outlet
New York City’s legal aid program offered a unique response to the outcry among advocates that immigrants who could not afford attorneys faced the moncler sale near certainty of deportation. A 2011 study by legal experts found that only 3 percent of detained immigrants who fought their cases without a lawyer managed to avoid deportation. By contrast, 18 percent of those detained and represented had successful cases. Nearly three quarters of people who fought their cases from moncler outlet sale outside detention with an attorney were allowed to remain in the country.
moncler outlet jackets Attorneys who work with the NYIFUP don’t expect everyone they assist to avoid deportation, but believe their role is important because detained immigrants are particularly vulnerable. Their cases can move quickly and it’s difficult to find or pay for representation while locked up. The program helps detained immigrants identify whether they have a case for staying many don’t, based on their convictions or immigration history and ensures that people who do have a claim for relief don’t fall through the cracks, advocates argue. moncler outlet jackets
“When we do identify that someone might be able to stay here, it’s because they fall into one of these categories of people where it seems that they’re among the most dire cases and categories of people that we should be providing representation for,” said Jennifer Friedman, managing director of the immigration practice at The Bronx Defenders, which works on the NYIFUP program. citizenship, she said. citizens who had been arrested by mistake, according to Mancheno.
moncler outlet Denying access to certain people is particularly concerning given the current political climate, with undocumented immigrants at greater threat of being caught up in deportation proceedings, some attorneys argue. On Thursday, the New York City Bar Association wrote moncler sale outlet to de Blasio urging the city “not to deny access to counsel to anyone based upon past convictions or criminal charges.” moncler outlet
“Denying counsel to some individuals based on their criminal record, or where they lived before being detained, will gut New York’s model universal representation system for immigrants,” bar association president John Kiernan wrote. “In this time of unprecedented hostility to immigrants from the federal government, New York should be expanding access to counsel, not contracting a successful and groundbreaking representation cheap moncler program.”
CORRECTION:A previous version of cheap moncler this story incorrectly stated Luis Mancheno’s employment affiliation. He is an immigration lawyer at the Cardozo School of Law.
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