Thread: In City of Lawyers, Immigrants Fighting Deportation Alone

In City of Lawyers, Many Immigrants Fighting Deportation Go It Alone




By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: March 12, 2009
New York Times


In the heart of Manhattan, amid one of the greatest concentrations of legal muscle in the world, hundreds of New York’s immigrant poor are locked up with no access to a lawyer as they fight deportation.

Robert A. Katzmann, a federal judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, believes that fact alone should summon the city’s legal profession to do more volunteer work in the immigration court system, where no defendant has the right to a court-appointed lawyer, and some of the most vulnerable end up in the hands of fly-by-night operators who bungle cases wholesale.

But Judge Katzmann, son of a refugee from Nazi Germany and grandson of immigrants from Russia, found that in the nation’s historic gateway to immigrants, few big corporate law firms seemed to hear that summons — even as the consequences of no lawyers or bad lawyers flooded the federal appeals courts, including his own.

So the judge took a rare step: Almost alone among the nation’s federal judges, he has used the prestige of his office to push for more and better legal representation of immigrants.

What started as a lecture to the city’s bar association two years ago and quietly evolved into a 7:45 a.m. “study group,â€

Mexico uses summary deportation.

These are not "immigrants". These are illegal aliens who have committed a multitude of other crimes in order to maintain their illegal presence in this country.

There are NO excuses, NO justifications, NO mitigating circumstances, NO defense whatsoever.

Not only are they, as prescribed by law, not ENTITLED to an attorney to represent them but what reputable attorney is going to put themselves out there representing clients they know are not only guilty of entering this country illegally but have committed any number of other crimes in the process?

I think the individual bar associations would have something to say about lawyers who knowingly represent those whom can be reasonably assumed to be guilty of felonious crimes in proceedings which would aid and abet those persons in continuing down that path.

Let's worry about American citizens who are railroaded in the courts more and more with each passing day, shall we?

There are many Americans and legal immigrants who can't afford lawyers, save your charity for them. Illegal aliens deserve nothing except a one way trip to their countries!