More than 4,000 Southwest Florida immigrants face deportation
More than 4000 Southwest Florida immigrants face deportation
4,100 immigrants in Lee & Collier Counties have ICE court cases
MELANIE PAYNE, TELLMEL@NEWS-PRESS.COM Published 6:39 p.m. ET Aug. 8, 2017 | Updated 7:05 p.m. ET Aug. 8, 2017
The government has started court proceedings to deport more than 4,000 immigrants living in Collier and Lee counties, according to data compiled by a Syracuse University group that tracks federal agencies.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) data show that three out of every four counties in the U.S. have residents with pending deportation cases in U.S. Immigration Courts. Although most counties had fewer than 24 residents with pending immigration cases, 10 percent had 200 or more residents with pending cases.
"We were focusing on the (legal) representation issue and wanted to look at how many cases were pending," said Professor Susan Long, co-director of TRAC. "We were shocked at the geography and distribution, that is was as widely distributed."
More: Click here to see pending immigration data for your town.
In Florida, all 67 counties but one have residents with pending immigration cases. Most of these immigrants reside in Miami-Dade and Broward counties with some incarcerated in detention facilities. Lee and Collier counties rank numbers five and six for the most pending cases in Florida, with more undocumented immigrants with court cases than in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval counties.
The number of immigration cases had grown only slightly prior to the inauguration of President Barack Obama. At the end of 2008, there were 186,108 pending immigration cases, according to TRAC data. By the end of Obama's term in 2016 there 516,031. The Trump administration seems on track to increase those numbers. As of June 2017, TRAC tallied 610,524 pending cases.
The data also tracked communities where the largest number of residents had pending immigration cases, listing the top 100. Houston was number one, with 33,360 cases. There were 10 communities in Florida on the top 100 list, including Naples, with 1,061 cases.
The high numbers of pending cases for Collier County residents could be due to the sheriff's office participation in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program "287(g)." Under the 287(g) program, if a person is arrested on criminal charges, the sheriff uses the ICE database to determine immigration status. Collier has been participating in the program since 2007 and it has resulted in 6,091 individuals detained for immigration violations and reported to ICE.
The Lee County Sheriff does not participate in the 287(g) program, which was one reason Lindsay Ray, an immigration attorney with the Amigos Center in Bonita Springs, was somewhat surprised by Lee County figures.
One of the most common reasons for arrest is driving without a license, she said, and the way the court deals with it, "goes two different ways in the two counties." In Lee County the undocumented immigrant is usually released on bond. "But in Collier County you get transferred to ICE," she said.
TRAC also compiled data on legal representation for immigrants facing deportation. For the immigrants who had a case filed in the last 90 days, there was only a 14.9 percent chance that a Lee County resident would be represented by an attorney. The number was better in Collier County, but still low with 32.2 percent.
Ray said she sets aside two mornings a month to meet with people about their cases, but added that these are just consults and she's not adding new clients. "I'm at capacity. I don't have a way to take more cases," she said.
Unlike other criminal proceedings, adult non-citizens facing deportation have no right to have an attorney appointed to them, Ray said. Without an attorney the chances of winning an asylum appeal or establishing the right to remain in the U.S.are slim.
"The research is solid," that those without lawyers don't often prevail, TRAC's Long said. "Immigration law is exceedingly complicated. And for many people English is not their native language. They don't know if they have a valid claim and even if they know they do, they don't know how to present it."
TRAC data shows 41,189 immigrants in Florida with pending immigration cases. Of those, 16,000 are not likely to have a lawyer to represent them when a judge hears their case.
And when you lose an immigration case, Long said, "the consequences are severe."
Yet, having a lawyer doesn't mean an immigrant will win the right to remain in the U.S. Fort Myers immigration attorney Indera DeMine said that many of the people who have immigrated illegally do not have any defense when it comes to deportation.
"I have a whole stack of people," for whom there is no hope of legal immigration, Demine said. "There are people I see that I have say, 'I can't do anything for you.'"
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