From the Audience: NY’s Immigration Landscape and How Lawyers Can Help
This week, we were thrilled to host Paladin’s first event: NY Tech Gives Back. Featuring a keynote by Lourdes Rosado, New York State Attorney General’s Civil Rights Bureau Chief, and a training by Claire Thomas, Director of Training of the Safe Passage Project, attending lawyers learned how to get started representing immigrant children, pro bono. Guest author attendee Cory Bronson shares her experience below!
I attended Paladin’s NY Tech Gives Back event focusing on the changing and escalating needs of immigrants and their families in the current political landscape. My perspective was that of a concerned citizen eager to understand what the shifting tides has meant for our fellow New Yorkers, neighbors, and friends.
After a quick introduction, Lourdes Rosado — Civil Rights Bureau Chief at the New York State Attorney General’s Office — painted the grim landscape. She explained that as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents have gained authority under President Trump, the threat to immigrants has dramatically increased. As example, many landlords feel empowered to harass their non-citizen tenants into leaving by threatening basic services such as electricity, heat, or water, or by removing the tenants’ personal property and possessions or locking them out of their apartments. Employers are similarly using the politically inspired prejudice to justify inhumane treatment of non-citizen employees. Some such employers withhold pay/tips, violating labor laws. These employees are at the mercy of the employer, who often won’t hesitate to call ICE to report the employee’s undocumented status.
This is a baffling and nauseating way for me to think about how one human being can treat another. Ms. Rosado impressed upon the audience the incredible need for attorneys to get involved and help these individuals stand against a new genre of abuse that is growing in our New York communities.
Claire Thomas of the Safe Passage Project shared a different side of immigrant struggle — that of indigent children traveling to the United States in search of a better life. She described the struggle of these children, depicting the horrific lives many of them lead before seeking asylum in America. They ride ‘La Bestia’ train, which literally translates to ‘the beast’ because of the way these children ride atop, holding on for their lives as the train travels across hundreds of miles of terrain. They travel unaccompanied and arrive essentially as orphans, with no adult or guardian to advocate for their welfare.
Upon entry, these children are tried and nearly always deported. Interestingly, they tried in civil court, not criminal court — Thomas explained — which is a critical distinction. In criminal court, the state provides an attorney when the defendant cannot, but not so in civil court. As such, these immigrant children, many of whom speak no English (let alone have any knowledge of immigration law), are left to fend for themselves.
However, with the assistance of an attorney, a child is able to plead his or her case and stands an incredibly increased chance of gaining permanent residence.
The two outcomes are opposites — one enables the child to pursue a safe and stable future, and the other has that child returning to gang wars, ethnic cleansing, extreme gender discrimination, and more.
It’s overwhelming to realize how much we have as Americans, and how many opportunities there are to offer kindness and help to those in need. It is shocking to think that in fewer hours than it would take to binge watch the entire series of Game of Thrones, an attorney could help a child procure citizenship and change that child’s life forever.
It almost makes me want to go to law school.
