Immigration Justice Project: Committed to Providing High-Quality Legal Services to Individuals in Immigration Detention

IJP staff is dedicated to providing high-quality legal services to individuals in immigration detention. IJP provides free representation to migrants held at OMDC, helping with their release from custody and with their claims for immigration relief, such as asylum. In addition to providing direct representation, IJP staff also operates a Legal Orientation Program at OMDC, where they provide information to individuals in detention to help them better understand the immigration system and advocate for themselves as pro se individuals. “The IJP staff are committed, dedicated, empathetic people who work in ever-changing and sometimes impossible conditions,” said Bob Carlson, Past-President of the ABA. “Day-in and day-out, sometimes with great personal sacrifice, they assist people from all over the world who come to the United States seeking its legal protections and a better life.”

Despite the commitment from IJP staff and other immigration practitioners in the San Diego region, there are not enough immigration attorneys to represent everyone in immigration proceedings. The need for volunteers to provide pro bono representation is greater than ever, as the backlog in immigration court outpaces the availability of counsel. Only 30% of people in immigration removal proceedings are represented, compared to five years ago when 65% of people in removal proceedings had attorney. A report from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse makes clear that pro bono representation is harder still, as “the odds of noncitizens seeking asylum or other forms of relief finding a volunteer attorney has plummeted to just two percent.”

The parole requests prepared by the delegation assisted individuals who were otherwise unlikely to find representation. Many of the volunteers have engaged in ongoing advocacy in the weeks following the pro bono trip to advocate for their clients to be released from detention and to help ensure that their due process rights are protected.

In addition to working on parole applications, the delegation visited the San Diego/Mexico border. “You often hear stories about the border in the news, but experiencing it firsthand was truly eye-opening,” commented Ms. Garcia. The group was guided by Benjamin Prado from American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit that works to enhance the human rights of migrant communities. Mr. Prado provided the delegation with an overview of the history of migration at the San Diego border, providing important context for the current reality. The delegation visited an open-air detention site, where migrants are kept outside between two border walls while waiting to be processed by Customs and Border Protection. During the visit, the group encountered individuals from India who were detained in the open-air facility. Delegation members witnessed volunteers passing essential supplies to the migrants through the slats in the border wall, providing them with bandages, food and water.

We are grateful to the volunteers who took the time from their busy schedules to visit the border where, as Mr. Carlson noted, the complexities “cannot be compressed into a political soundbite.”

If you would like to support our programs, you can provide a donation to the ABA Commission on Immigration or the ABA Immigration Justice Project, or fill out a Volunteer Interest Survey to learn more about volunteering to help migrants with their immigration proceedings.