New Stats On Need For Border Kid Lawyers

The numbers just keep getting worse when it comes to legal representation for those unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. border seeking refuge. According to Syracuse University’sĀ Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, some 32 percent of unaccompanied immigrant children have been represented by counsel. But that national percentage reflects widely ranging jurisdictions, and NBC News is reporting that “… in New York, the figure is higher, with 43 percent of unaccompanied children accessing legal representation.”
The NBC story reports that “… having legal representation makes a difference in whether a child is allowed to remain in the U.S. Syracuse University found that almost three-quarters of represented children were allowed by the court to remain in the U.S., whereas only fifteen percent of unrepresented children had a similar outcome.
Syracuse University found that almost three-quarters of represented children were allowed by the court to remain in the U.S., whereas only fifteen percent of unrepresented children had a similar outcome.”
The report also said that, in 2014, “… about 68,000 unaccompanied children were detained at the border. While these numbers have since dropped, they are still significant;Ā U.S. Customs and Border Protection reportsĀ that 7,771 unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala have been apprehended in FY 2015 to date.”
Immigration courts are not federal courts in the usual sense, but actually work for the Department of Justice. While the children are allowed to have legal representation, the government considers the action “civil,” so has no obligation to provide an attorney as it might in a criminal case. See the new NBC report here: