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28 Pass It On: Newsl. Gov't & Pub. Sector Law. Div. 1 (2018-2019)

handle is hein.journals/passit28 and id is 1 raw text is: By Hope Mirski any legal assistance organizations have adjusted their operations to help with the increased number of detained immigrants. This includes the ABA and several public defender offices. With the recent policy changes, lawyers across the nation are stepping up to fill the void. Public Defenders Unlike criminal defendants, indigent detained immigrants do not have a right to an attorney under the U.S. Constitution. The representation of detained indigent immi- grants by public defender offices is a relatively new development. One example of this trend is the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). Founded in 2013, NYIFUP was fully funded in 2014 by the New York City Council, providing universal immigrant representa- tion to ...every low-income immigrant facing deportation in the City of New York, as well as to detained New Yorkers facing ,u deportation in the nearby immi- gration courts in New Jersey. Some of its major partnerships include the Vera Institute of Justice and the Independent Democratic Conference, which awarded the NYIFU $4 million.2 The program is comprised of three public defender organiza- tions: Bronx Defenders, the Legal Aid Society, and Brooklyn Defender Services. NYIFUP has prevailed in over 500 cases, according to Nyasa Hickey, a BDS supervising attorney, in testimony to the New York City Council in July of 2018.4 In the same testimony before the NYC Council, the organization committed themselves to reuniting separated immigrant families by sending attorneys to supervise the interviews of detainees and provide legal representation for them. Other states have followed the model of NYIFU. The Office of the Alameda County Public Defender launched California's first embedded immigration representation unit in 2014. Raha Jorjani, a supervising immigration defense attorney and the founder of the project, states that the unit has served as a model for immigration representation embedded in public defense, inspired by the idea that a public defender office can provide holistic representation that involves going beyond direct representation in criminal proceedings. Focusing on the intersection between criminal defense and immigration defense, the Alameda County Public Defenders Immigration Unit is currently representing noncitizen clients in over 100 legal matters with an estimated success rate of about 75 percent of the motions or pleadings filed. One of the unique aspects of the unit's work is that it regularly takes post-conviction relief cases that involve vacating or modifying prior convictions in order to mitigate or avoid the immigration consequences stemming from those convictions. The unit also engages in federal litigation when necessary to protect the constitutional rights of detained immigrants. Jorjani cites the work of attorney Su Yon Yi, who, for one client, filed an emergency stay motion, got a case reopened, and won the principle case against the deportation in a matter of days. In 2017, the San Francisco Public Defender Office (SFPDO) launched its Immigra- Number 1, Fall 2018. © 2018 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof i any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

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