An immigration lawyer in America…
By Geoff Trenchard, an immigration lawyer based in New York. Geoff works with the New Sanctuary Coalition of NYC to help vulnerable individuals and families access immigration legal support. You can read more about his client Amanda’s case on CrowdJustice.
The hardest part about being an immigration attorney right now is that I don’t believe I am dealing with an honest broker. By that I mean I do not feel like I am dealing with an Administration that acknowledges basic humanity of the people affected by its actions.
Every time ICE representatives talk about their dedication to the “rule of law”, I am amazed they are able to keep a straight face. ICE officers stalk sex trafficking and domestic violence victims in the courts. They try to intimidate schools into releasing information about students without a warrant. All of my colleagues have stories of DHS using delaying tactics to keep people in legal limbo as long as possible.
Amanda Morales Guerra fled Guatemala and came to America after a local gang threatened to kidnap her. After years of cooperating with ICE and checking in every few months, ICE is now trying to deport her because of Trump’s policies.
Nothing changed about Amanda’s situation from last year when ICE told her she could stay in the US, and this year when ICE told her to get a one way ticket to Guatemala. ICE has always had the option to allow her, and thousands of other families, to stay here. ICE is choosing to break up families because they are told to do so by a President that has endorsed the views of white supremacists.
They are not interested in following the “rule of law”, they are interested in following orders.
That people were afraid to go to hurricane shelters because they were afraid of being deported is the kind of banality of evil that Hannah Arendt warned us about after the Holocaust. They are setting up the same systems that all genocidal regimes use. They take away people’s right to access courts. They push them to physically isolated locations. They make believe it’s not murder if a trigger isn’t pulled, but the people who froze to death in box cars on the way to Auschwitz were just as much victims as the ones who were shot or gassed. And the government that created the situation is just as guilty.
“a delay of a few weeks can mean the difference between being deported and staying in the US”
My goal with the Due Process Fund is to force the system to give people a fair chance to advocate for their case. The organizations that provide free legal services were over capacity before the election, and the last few months have made things even worse. There are so many time sensitive issues in Immigration proceedings, a delay of a few weeks can mean the difference between being deported and staying in the US. If Amanda would have been able to access someone to do $300 of legal work for her when she arrived in 2004, she very likely wouldn’t be in this situation now.
The goal of the Due Process fund is to be able to pay for attorneys for people like Amanda who are fighting a system that moves too fast for the strategizes used before Trump. The goal is to give everyone a fighting chance.
Learn more about Amanda’s case, here.
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(The views of the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of CrowdJustice)
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