NEW YORK — Immigrants and a coalition of organizations demanded this Thursday that New York Governor Kathy Hochul approve the Access to Representation Act (ARA) in the final state budget that is being evaluated in the legislature to include the right to legal counsel for those facing deportation, something that, if approved, would be a first for the country.
The coalition of organizations recalled during a press conference that state legislators last week confirmed their commitment to allocate 120 million dollars in the proposed budget, most of it to finance legal services, and called on them to approve the law proposal.
An immigrant who is not in a detention center and has a lawyer has a 60% chance of winning his case compared to 17% for those who do not have legal assistance, according to 2018 data cited on his page by the well-known Instituto Vera, which fights at the national level to transform the penal and immigration system and which supports the approval of ARA.
Those concentrated in today’s event warned that this money will not be available if the bill is left out of the final budget and recalled that immigrants, when they cannot afford a lawyer, are forced to represent themselves in a court of immigration, which puts them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis government lawyers.
“Hochul, listen, we are in the fight” shouted immigrants during a demonstration in front of the governor’s office in Manhattan, who were not stopped by the persistent rain that was falling at the time.
The mostly Latino immigrants carried signs with messages such as “New Yorkers need access to (legal) representation” or “Keep my family together, pass the ARA.”
One of them was the Peruvian Lina Ochoa, ex-police officer and mother of two children, who recounted the nightmare they experienced when they tried to hire a lawyer for the political asylum process they were seeking to initiate, after settling in New York a year ago.
“They asked for 10,000 dollars for each one but since we are family, they left us 8,000 for the final price, which we could not pay,” he told EFE. They went to an NGO but because they had an excess of cases they could not help them. Finally, they were put in touch with another group that finally provided free help and helped them obtain asylum.
Lawyer Alexandra Rizio, from the Safe Passage Project organization, represents unaccompanied children who have arrived in this country and among them have had babies up to four months old, whom the Government has placed in deportation proceedings.
“More and more children need our help, and their cases are taking longer and longer due to court and visa backlogs,” he said.
Hochul sent the legislature last month a $227 billion budget proposal that is in the midst of negotiations in the legislature and must be approved no later than April 1, and now pro-immigrant groups are pushing for the ARA not to stay out
As of September 2022, there were 180,000 cases awaiting appointment in immigration courts in New York, and nearly two million nationwide.
