Illinois advocacy groups say DOJ 'quietly gutting' legal aid services for low-income immigrants
Thirteen Illinois-based nonprofits are decrying what they say is the quiet dismantling of a longtime federal program that helps provide legal aid to low-income immigrants.
For more than 60 years, the Department of Justice has operated the Recognition and Accreditation Program — a program that lets non-attorneys provide legal services and has made affordable representation available to families who cannot afford a private attorney.
The senior DOJ attorneys who ran the program were abruptly reassigned to work as entry-level law clerks, according to The Resurrection Project and a dozen other partner agencies.
“I think the federal government has been attacking immigrants, our neighbors, our teachers, our workers, from the beginning. Limiting people's ability to live a full life, to participate in their communities, by stopping them from even having access to a lawyer when they're in court, is just one more way that the federal administration is doing that,” said Tovia Siegel, director of organizing and leadership for Immigrant Justice at The Resurrection Project of Chicago.
The group said there were no advance warnings to the more than 900 nonprofit organizations and 2,600 accredited representatives nationwide who participate in the program.
Siegel said there is already a massive need for representation while there is also a lack of due process for immigrants who are applying for benefits while also fighting deportation.
“What this program does is it expands access … to high quality, trusted legal representation through nonprofits, to affordable, low or no-cost representation, a really essential service that immigrants need,” Siegel said. “The dismantling of this program is just one more insidious way that the Trump administration has undercut the ability for people to have due process when they face their day in court, when they're facing potential family separation or being sent to a country that they do not believe they can be safe in, or sometimes that they've never even lived in.”
Liza Gutierrez, the director of immigrant programs at Partners for Our Communities in Palatine, said it’s a tremendous loss not having the program.
“We've been fighting for equity in getting representation to the most needy in our communities. When it comes to obtaining immigration reliever representation, there's just not enough and people cannot afford to go to your traditional attorney,” said Gutierrez, who is herself a DOJ accredited representative.
Without the program, Gutierrez fears low-income immigrants desperate to obtain legal status may get taken advantage of by others.
“We see people getting charged $10,000 to $20,000 for filing an asylum case, which is only like a $100 yearly fee,” Gutierrez said. “This means that now folks that are lower on the income scale will not be able to have that access to representation. We know that that representation is what's going to make a case winnable. When you show up to court without representation, you're most likely not going to win the case.”
A spokesman for the Department of Justice did not provide a response to questions about the program.
Other Illinois groups that have signed a letter in support of the program are: Partners for Our Communities (POC); Hanul Family Alliance; Binational Institute of Human Development; Spanish Community Center; Latino Policy Forum; AKWAABA QC; La Casa Norte; Chicago Workers Collaborative; FEDECMI / Casa Michoacan; Instituto Del Progreso Latino; United African Organization (UAO); and Erie Neighborhood House
The groups are asking DOJ to return the senior attorneys back to their roles with the Recognition and Accreditation program. They are also calling on Congress to exercise its oversight authority and demand a full public accounting for the changes to the program.