One Foot Out the Door: Project addresses needs of immigrants facing deportationAuthor(s): MICHAEL HIGGINSSource: ABA Journal, Vol. 85, No. 3 (MARCH 1999), p. 87Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27840712 .

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YOUR ABA

One Foot Out the Door

Project addresses needs of immigrants facing deportation

A staff lawyer advises immigrant detainees of their rights at the INS

rocessing center in Florence, Ariz.

BY MICHAEL HIGGINS

Sixteen men wearing inmate garb sat in an immigration court room in Florence, Ariz., a small town in the desert southeast of Phoenix. With no constitutional right to an attorney, they awaited a hearing that could change their lives. But Elizabeth Dallam, pro bono coordinator for the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Pro ject, was there anyway.

Dallam explained to the men

?speaking in slow, patient Span ish?why they were arrested and brought to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service process ing center. She told them what rights they did have* and how they might avoid being forced to leave the United States.

For some of the detainees, Dal lam's speech was grimly familiar. They have been caught more than a dozen times crossing the border to work illegally as farm laborers. But for others, it was the crucial intro duction to the rights that could save them from political persecution in their home countries.

Aba President Philip S. Ander son of Little Rock, Ark., also was in Florence on that mid-January day, touring the center with officials of the State Bar of Arizona as part of his campaign for better legal repre sentation for immigrants. At a news conference outside the center,

Anderson said Dallam's presenta tion was part of what makes the Florence center the most admired immigration facility in the country among both advocates for immi grant rights and ins officials.

"In this facility, the court, the ins and the pro bono project are

working together," Anderson told reporters. "The bedrock of Ameri can law is due process, and the de tainees here have due process."

Unfortunately, that is not true at every ins facility, Anderson cau tioned. Tougher immigration laws have pushed the number of detain ees at any one time above 16,000 nationwide?up 70 percent from 1996. Many never hear a basic pre sentation on their rights.

Serious Ramifications Whether they deserve to be

deported or not, immigrant detain ees have only a slim chance of suc

cessfully navigating the U.S. legal system, and the consequences of a wrong legal move can be grave. Those who plead incorrectly may be wrongly deported and face new, stiff penalties if they try to return.

In 1998, the aba Immigration Pro Bono Development and Bar Ac tivation Project awarded $550,000 in grants to improve immigrant representation. Since 1993, the aba has committed nearly $800,000 to that effort. The initiative is the aba's largest pro bono effort ever, at

least in terms of dollars. The funding has come primarily from the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Insti tute, an arm of the George Soros Foundation.

Aba officials also have pushed for political change, meeting regularly with Jus tice Department officials. In January 1998, ins officials agreed that all the service's detention centers should pro vide detainees with rights presentations, plus good ac cess to lawyers, law librar ies and telephones.

But it will not be easy to bring all of the facilities up to the standard set at

Florence, said Kristine Marcy, an ins official who toured the center

with Anderson. The agency pro cessed 155,000 detainees last year, often at facilities not built to be de tention centers.

Moreover, the new ins stan dards do not apply to the 60 percent of detainees held in "contract facili ties"?mostly county and city jails. Anderson wants that to change. "Ultimately, the ins is responsible for everyone who is detained," he said in Florence.

The immigrant rights project in Florence began in 1989 when a

judge became worried that he might be wrongly deporting some

immigrants. Their pro se appear ances simply gave him no chance to fairly assess their cases.

The Phoenix firm of Lewis & Roca answered the judge's call for help. One of its lawyers, Christo pher Brelje, spent a year investi gating the problem. Brelje founded the project to give presentations and represent inmates with prom ising cases. In 1996, the project won the Justice Department's Meritor ious Public Service Award.

Project leaders credit Don Loo ney, officer in charge of the Flor ence center, for accommodating their efforts.

Anderson said volunteer attor neys "can literally make a difference between life and death for the peo ple they keep in this country."

ABAJAOM GERCZYNSKI ABA JOURNAL / MARCH 1999 87

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