Fighting for Fairness

Chicago's immigration system is complicated, and securing legal help can be even harder. This website aims to identify and explore the main obstacles immigrants face in obtaining legal aid, including language barriers, limited resources, and the high cost and scarcity of lawyers. Through our research, we hope to bring these hurdles to light and propose solutions for a fairer, more accessible legal system for all Chicago immigrants.

Currently, there is a crisis in the US Immigration Court system. The inadequate amount of immigration attorneys is leading to a large number of noncitizen respondents without legal representation to navigate a notoriously complicated sector of the law and contributing to the court’s historic backlog of cases.

Since immigration cases such as cases for removal from the country are considered civil cases, immigrants looking to fight deportation or to attain legal status are NOT guaranteed funded legal representation from the government. 

Our fight for fair representation found its first barrier in language. Language is the way we express ourselves, understand others, and build relationships with others. It is a critical component of acquiring resources, including community support and legal representation. The current resources to bridge language barriers are insufficient. It is a system that treats one language as a translation of another, and it fails to recognize the barriers that exist in all stages of language acquisition.

In this section, we track the progression of language acquisition, as immigrants must simultaneously use and apply language. Relying on translation can create barriers between an individual and the resources they are trying to access. Language is not only a bridge to resources but also a resource in and of itself. Language education resources were alongside clothes, food, shelter, community, and legal resources at the free stores and food pantries we visited. In many contexts, passable English only allows one to access a limited number of resources. Finding job opportunities, interacting fully with the community, and overcoming linguistic discrimination is only accessible to those who reach a high level of proficiency in a language.

Not every language had the same educational resources. For example, some immigrants had their cases adjourned because the court did not have an in-house interpreter for their native language. In our group, we got the most data from immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries just because they were the most represented in our immediate community. Ultimately, language access is a resource unto itself that calls for a more complex solution than interpreters in court. 

The next major setback immigrants in Chicago face are the barriers to educational and legal resources. As we have discussed, many new immigrants arrive in Chicago with limited resources and limited knowledge about the resources provided by the government. Finding out about the aid available to them can be inhibited by problems in accessibility. We’ve identified five main barriers to accessibility: a language barrier, access to technology, transportation/location, living situation, and capacity.

We visited two migrant shelters in South Side Chicago to better understand the resources available to Immigrants in Chicago.

Finally, immigrants face impossible costs that hinder their access to the non-profit services that do exist. After calling and looking at the websites for various immigration-focused law firms in Chicago the hefty price tag for private legal services was clear. Here are the average costs for lawyers to perform the following services:

To give a better idea of the overall costs of an asylum case that could last anywhere from three months to ten years, the average hourly rate of attorneys in Immigration law firms in Chicago is:

$545/hour

High costs of representation was an observation members of the research groups often heard while watching court proceedings. The respondents often cited that they did not have the money, couldn’t find legal work without a work authorization to even attempt to cover the costs or did not even get a response back to their inquiries to law firms.

In 2022, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the Defenders For All legislation which was supported by a Cook County Board of Commissioners resolution to allow the Cook County Public Defender's Office to be one of a handful of jurisdictions that allows their public defenders to represent non-citizens in immigration cases.

The CCPD’s immigration unit currently has three working attorneys who at the time of our interview on April 15, 2024, were working 40 active cases of detained migrants going through court proceedings.

During our interview with Hena Mansori, the Attorney Supervisor of the Immigration Unit at the CCPD, she staunchly defended the need for universal state-funded representation in immigration cases. 

Though the CCPD’s Immigration Unit is currently small Mansori says the office intends to add more attorney’s and continue to grow to meet the needs of the underrepresented migrant population in Cook County.

During a conversation, Professor Heeren, the Director of ​​the Immigration Litigation & Appellate Clinic, shared that  "a lot of people who are eligible for [various] forms of relief do not have the resources to pay an attorney." To represent the extent of demand in the Clinic, Heeren gave insights into the average caseload. The Clinic serves thirty to forty cases at any given time, with twelve active cases denoted by court visits, administrative filing, and client meetings.

In Chicago, through a conversation with Professor Carmona at the Chicago Kent Law Immigration Clinic, it became clear that due to the demand for representation, the Chicago clinic cannot take all the cases they receive. As such, they prioritize cases based on humanitarian grounds, which enables them to apply for Withholding from Removal, Relief Under the Convention Against Torture, and Relief Under the Violence Against Women's Act.

One may then ask, what is next? What does the future have in store for the immigration space? In one word, the answer is increase. Professor Carmona and Professor Heeren shared similar sentiments on the future outlook for immigration into the U.S. and the immigration system in America generally. They speculate there will be increasing international movements due to the significant crises of internally displaced people due to wars, climate crises, and several other reasons. As such, there will be an increasing number of refugees and asylum seekers. Considering the existing backlog in immigration courts, the increase in the aforementioned areas will likely cause additional backlog due to the limited number of judges and legal counsel. As such, to respond to the increasing number of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, they suggested some areas of improvement: developing new frameworks to respond to policy crises, limiting changes to immigration laws and policies while increasing the legal system's responsiveness to the growing and newly emerging crises. Also, they noted that immigration had become a highly political subject that is subject to variability depending on the government in power. They suggested that should not be the case, instead advocating for immigration to become depoliticized. Also, at the end of our research, we hope that, though we are still a long way from it, universal representation within the immigration law will ensure that all migrants have a fair chance at a new life.

Representation is often depicted as voting in elections, exercising constitutional rights, and fair courts. After viewing representation through the lens of immigration, it becomes clear that representation is much more than what meets the eye. Fair representation means access to food, water, shelter, education, language education, transportation, and protection. It means having the resources to stand on your own feet and participate fully in society. Therefore, increasing immigrants’ legal representation starts long before they enter the courtroom.

Works Cited:

Chicago.gov. (n.d.). New Arrivals Situational Awareness Dashboard. Retrieved from  https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/texas-new-arrivals/home/Dashboard.html#:~:text=New%20Arrivals%20Situational%20Awareness%20Dashboard,the%20City's%20new%20arrivals%20response 

Chicago Maroon. (2024, March). New migrant arrivals at shelter locations. Retrieved from  https://chicagomaroon.com/41872/special-issue/new-migrant-arrivals-at-shelter-locations/ 

City of Chicago. (n.d.). Resource flyers for new Americans. Retrieved May 22, 2024, from  https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/supp_info/office-of-new-americans/resource-flyers-for-new-americans.html 

Cook County Public Defender. Immigration Division. Retrieved from  https://www.cookcountypublicdefender.org/resources/immigration-division 

Illinois Policy. (2024, May 17). Chicago spending on migrants reaches nearly $300M as evictions begin. Retrieved May 22, 2024, from  https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-spending-on-migrants-reaches-nearly-300m-as-evictions-begin/ 

Migration Policy Institute. (n.d.). Retrieved from  https://www.migrationpolicy.org/ 

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University (2023, December). Too Few Immigration Attorneys: Average Representation Rates Fall from 65% To 30%. Retrieved from  https://trac.syr.edu/reports/736/