Tag: Oregon

🛡⚔️ROUND TABLE’S HON. ANDREA SLOAN SPEAKS OUT ON UNIVERSAL REPRESENTATION IN PORTLAND (OR) TRIBUNE — “Our immigration legal system should be based on facts, law, and justice, not access to wealth and resources.”

Knightess
Knightess of the Round Table

https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/10-opinion/511161-408597-sloan-tupper-immigrants-deserve-right-to-legal-representation?iMonezaUT=0d2036bd-0384-4938-af0c-b6d6180476c6%7C637586216702542643%7C637901576702542643%7CwfjoCDjpamaDdaK4IrmbAA7RYbBnepWY2mL74k3hYI&wallit_nosession=1#

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Sloan, Tupper: Immigrants deserve right to legal representation

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Sloan, Tupper: Immigrants deserve right to legal representation

Andrea Sloan and Leni Tupper

June 06 2021

The Honorable Andrea Sloan is a retired Portland Immigration Court judge. Leni Tupper is a former attorney adviser in the Portland Immigration Court, and current co-director of Portland Community College’s CLEAR Clinic and co-chair of PCC’s Paralegal Program.

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ANDREA SLOAN

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LENI TUPPER

Legal representation in immigration court can mean the difference between someone being allowed to remain home, safely in the United States, or being permanently torn from their family, deported and placed in harm’s way.

It can mean access to interpreters in a person’s correct language and dialect so they can fully express their experiences, trauma, and fear. It can mean access to the mental health services and diagnosis necessary to support their wellbeing and their immigration case. Most importantly, it can mean the realization of a right that everyone should be guaranteed: the right to a fair trial.

Instead, most non-citizens in immigration court proceedings are left to navigate the system, commonly referred to as second in complexity only to the U.S. Tax Code, completely alone. That includes children, sometimes very young children. The U.S. immigration court system, unlike our criminal legal system, does not provide court-appointed counsel to immigrants facing deportation who are unable to afford a lawyer. Only 37% of all immigrants and 14% of detained immigrants are represented by attorneys in immigration court, according to a 2016 American Immigration Council study.

Most importantly, immigrants with legal representation are far more likely to be released from detention and succeed in their removal defenses than unrepresented people. According to an AIC study, 63% of non-detained represented immigrants were granted relief in immigration court, while only 13% of unrepresented immigrants were. And tellingly, people appearing before the Portland Immigration Court without legal representation are nearly five-and-a-half times more likely to lose their cases and be deported than those who have an attorney.

As a retired immigration judge and former attorney advisor in the Portland Immigration Court, we have seen these struggles firsthand. We know the trauma that our immigration system inflicts on people, often with an existing history of trauma. And we know that legal representation can lessen the trauma of navigating this virtually incomprehensible system.

But most importantly, we know that legal representation can help avoid the ultimate trauma of deportation. The lack of legal representation for people in the immigration court system, which decides “death penalty cases in a traffic court setting,” is unsustainable not only for the vulnerable members of our community who are subject to its whims, but for those who work in it as well.

Our immigration legal system should be based on facts, law, and justice, not access to wealth and resources. If passed, House Bill 3230 will allow our immigrant community members to exercise their full right to due process under the law and provide access to legal representation. Oregon could be a national leader in ensuring immigrant rights by providing access to counsel.

Please join us in supporting HB 3230 to make this vision of Oregon a reality.

The Honorable Andrea Sloan is a retired Portland Immigration Court judge. Leni Tupper is a former attorney adviser in the Portland Immigration Court, and current co-director of Portland Community College’s CLEAR Clinic and co-chair of PCC’s Paralegal Program.

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Given the lack of responsiveness by the DOJ to our suggestions and recommendations, we’re going to have to fight for due process on all fronts. State and local universal representation programs are a huge opportunity. 

Represented individuals are more likely to be able to hold the Government accountable and force change that ultimately will save lives and benefit all.

Thanks for speaking out so forcefully and articulately, Andrea and Leni!

🇺🇸⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-08-21

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😎🗽⚖️👍🏼EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT FROM “COURTSIDE” — Introducing NDPA Superstar & Now Co-Editor Sophia I. Barba!

 

I am delighted to announce that Sophia Isabel Barba has joined Courtside as Co-Editor. In addition to the many achievements described in her bio below, Sophia comes from a family with a lifetime commitment to due process and equal justice under law for migrants. Her father Francisco Barba is an immigration attorney and the principal of the Law Offices of Francisco J. Barba, San Jose, CA. I first met a Sophia when she invited me to be the inaugural speaker at the Tulane Immigration Law Society which she founded.

Here’s Sophia’s bio:

Sophia Barba is a newly minted law graduate native to the Bay Area in California. She attended a small liberal arts college in Portland, Reed College, where she majored in Anthropology and authored a thesis examining the intersection of racial dynamics in the creation of immigration policy in the United States. After graduating from Reed, Sophia spent time working for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, where she helped develop strategies to make access to public services more accessible and inclusive to immigrant and low-income communities. After her time in Portland, Sophia attended Tulane University Law School. 


At Tulane, Sophia worked with a bevy of different immigration-related firms and organizations including Catholic Charities, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, and others. At the advent of a developing immigration law program at Tulane, Sophia founded the Tulane Immigration Law Society, which sought to provide a platform for students and lawyers alike to connect. Sophia graduated from Tulane Law in 2020, after which point she clerked for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. She recently passed the California Bar Exam and hopes to use her license to support the immigrant’s rights both as an attorney, and as part of the Immigration Courtside family!

Please join me in welcoming Sophia to Courtside!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️😎👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

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STUFFED AGAIN: Trump’s Attempt To Use Health Insurance As A Way To Cut Legal Immigration Temporarily Stopped By U.S. District Judge In Oregon – Administration That Works Tirelessly To Increase Number Of Uninsured Or Underinsured Americans Saw Bogus Health Insurance Requirement For Immigrants As Device To Circumvent Statute & Unlawfully Slash Legal Immigration!

 

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=0e59f13d-9a82-4908-9249-75e7fe5b281d

 

The AP reports:

 

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge on Saturday put on hold a Trump administration rule requiring that immigrants prove they will have health insurance or can pay for medical care before they can receive visas.

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon granted a preliminary injunction that prevents the rule from going into effect Sunday. It’s not clear when he will rule on the merits of the case.

Seven U.S. citizens and a nonprofit organization filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday contending the rule would block nearly two-thirds of all prospective immigrants coming to the U.S. legally.

The lawsuit also said the rule would greatly reduce or eliminate the number of immigrants who enter the United States with family-sponsored visas. “We’re very grateful that the court recognized the need to block the healthcare ban immediately,” said Justice Action Center senior litigator Esther Sung, who argued at Saturday’s hearing on behalf of the plaintiffs. “The ban would separate families and cut two-thirds of green-card-based immigration starting tonight, were the ban not stopped.”

The proclamation signed by President Trump in early October applies to people seeking visas from abroad — not those in the U.S. already. It does not affect lawful permanent residents. It does not apply to asylum seekers, refugees or children.

The proclamation says immigrants will be barred from entering the country unless they will be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or have enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs.

The rule is the Trump administration’s latest effort to limit immigrant access to public programs while trying to move the country away from a family-based immigration system to a merit-based system.

The White House said in a statement at the time the proclamation was issued that too many noncitizens were taking advantage of the country’s “generous public health programs” and that immigrants contribute to the problem of “uncompensated healthcare costs.”

Under the government’s visa rule, the required insurance can be bought individually or provided by an employer and it can be short-term coverage or catastrophic.

Medicaid doesn’t count, and an immigrant can’t get a visa if using the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies, which the federal government pays for. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank, 57% of U.S. immigrants had private health insurance in 2017, compared with 69% of U.S.-born, and 30% had public health insurance coverage, compared with 36% of native-born.

The uninsured rate for immigrants dropped from 32% to 20% from 2013 to 2017, since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to Migration Policy.

About 1.1 million people obtain green cards each year.

“Countless thousands across the country can breathe a sigh of relief today because the court recognized the urgent and irreparable harm that would have been inflicted” without the hold, said Jesse Bless, director of federal litigation at the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

Earlier this year, the administration made sweeping changes to regulations that would deny green cards to immigrants who use some forms of public assistance, but the courts have blocked that measure.

 

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Trump continues to abuse the legal system and the Federal Courts with impunity to carry out his White Nationalist agenda. Unless and until the Circuits and the Supremes stand up to Trump’s racist-inspired lawlessness in clear and authoritative terms, the abuse will continue.

Appellate judicial wimpiness breeds contempt!

 

PWS

 

11-04-19

 

 

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