Following Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps that resulted in the arrests of two New Jersey dads while a third fled to sanctuary, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has told community groups that he is committed to the creation of an Office of Immigration Protection, which could help undocumented immigrants facing arrest and deportation with legal representation:
"The Office of Immigrant Protection will serve as a single point of contact for any New Jersey resident facing detention or deportation, with a focus on expanding access to legal services to these residents," said spokesman Dan Bryan.
Immigration advocates here have long been pressing the state to provide representation for those in detention, and are hopeful the governor's moves are steering New Jersey in that direction.
More than 50 organizations called on Murphy—who defeated anti-immigrant Republican gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno last November—to establish a program following ICE possibly violating their own protocol to arrest two Indonesian dads as they dropped their kids off at school. A third dad went into sanctuary when ICE went to his home to also try to take him into custody.
As the letter from the organization states, “deportation is one of the harshest penalties an individual can face under U.S. law, yet most immigrants do not have the right to appointed counsel and cannot afford an attorney.” According to one study, “with guaranteed legal representation, up to 12 times as many immigrants have been able to win their cases”:
Universal representation will also help keep New Jersey families together and will benefit the U.S. citizen children of immigrants. 87.5% of New Jersey children with immigrant parents were U.S. citizens in 2009. Deporting their parents means tearing families apart and leaving children in foster care or other vulnerable circumstances in the U.S. or abroad. In 2011, an estimated 5,100 children in foster care had a deported or detained parent. When immigrants have a fair chance to fight their case, they are more likely to win and keep their families intact.
In the state, families are reeling from ICE’s increased sweeps on immigrant families. “We had one night when 35 dads were taken in one night from Avenel, New Jersey, from the same apartment complex,” said Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale of Reformed Church of Highland Park. “I had 60 kids become orphans that night or become fatherless”:
"Access to counsel is a matter of due process," said Farrin Anello, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. "The federal government is always represented by counsel in immigration court. When an unrepresented person is forced to argue complex issues of immigration law against a trained government lawyer, this leads to absurd and unfair results."
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year announced he would allocate money to create a legal defense fund to ensure all immigrants have access to representation. Several cities across the country have also been putting together programs to provide attorneys to those being held in detention.
Anello said the aggressive stance by the Trump Administration on detention and deportation "has made the need for representation more urgent than ever. "