More Immigration Lawfare: Major Firms Take Cases
Major law firms take on immigration cases, criticize Trump policies
Nearly three dozen law firms, including Miller Canfield in Detroit, are working to help immigrant families that have been detained and separated from their children.
“There is a crescendo of outrage in this country right now over the separation of children from their parents with no plan to reunite them,” said Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. “It is no surprise that lawyers around the nation are joining forces to stand up to this absolute ruthlessness."
At the same time, the number of immigration cases has been rapidly on the rise with no sign this trend will cease, meaning more attorneys are needed to represent defendants, and more judges are needed to hear cases.
Beginning in 2009, the number of pending immigration cases in the United States has increased, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse which is maintained by Syracuse University.
From 2001 to 2008, the number of cases remained relatively steady, with 186,108 cases in 2008. But, in 2009, the number of cases jumped to 223,809, steadily rising each year, reaching 714,067 cases in 2018.
In Michigan, there were 4,968 cases in the fiscal year 2018, more than any year in two decades.
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Unlike criminal cases in which states are required to provide an attorney to service defendants, immigration cases are civil, so defendants are not appointed legal representation by the government, said Ruby Robinson, co-managing attorney for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center in Ann Arbor.
"But," he added, "counsel makes a huge difference, and obviously would be ideal."
Last month, 34 major firms signed onto an essay, "The Law Did Not Create This Crisis, but Lawyers Will Help End It," in the New York Times. The piece criticized the administration, announced the group's efforts to help immigrant families and called for action.
"As a group, we cannot stand by as our government, under the pretext of enforcing the law, violates it and traumatizes children and their parents in the process," it said. "We are professionally obligated to safeguard the rule of law and to protect the poor and the vulnerable against targeted governmental abuses."
Miller Canfield said it joined the group of law firms because it has a history of taking civil rights and immigration cases, including a class action lawsuit that stopped the removal of about 300 Iraqi nationals who had come to America legally.
The essay made the case that President Donald Trump's policy of separating children from their parents was immoral and the order that ended it did not address how to help more than 2,000 children, including infants, who already had been separated.
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/8d4...t=405&fit=cropDemonstrators gather outside the Waukesha County Sheriff's Office at the courthouse on June 30 to protest the county's involvement in the federal immigration control enforcement initiative. The Waukesha protest was part of a broader national protest on immigration issues tied to the Trump administration. (Photo: Voces de la Frontera)
It blasted Trump for ignoring U.S. law and the Constitution, and for "prosecuting every person who illegally crosses the border, no matter his or her circumstance." Many of those families, it said, "are escaping unimaginable persecution in their home countries."
And it called on the administration to develop an immediate plan to reunify children and families, release families who pose no threat to the United States and to end the policy of criminally prosecuting asylum seekers.
Miller Canfield, which has about 220 attorneys and is the only one in the group of 33 based in Michigan, took a pro bono case in which it represented a woman who came to America with her teen son. The family was separated, and the mother was detained in one state and the son was sent to a facility in another state.
"What’s going on is breaking the nation’s heart, and it is tough for anyone to sit idle and do nothing," Moss said. "As lawyers, as human beings, it is our duty to respond and we have a long tradition of the private bar joining with public interest organizations like the ACLU to bring about justice.”
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or [email]fwitsil@freepress.com.Frank Witsil, Detroit Free PressPublished 3:30 a.m. MT July 5, 2018
