The American Immigration Council doesn’t endorse or oppose candidates for elected workplace. We goal to offer evaluation concerning the implications of the election on the U.S. immigration system.
On March 22, the Trump administration issued a memo, directing the Lawyer Common and the Secretary of the Division of Homeland Safety to take disciplinary and punitive motion in opposition to attorneys working towards in our nationwide courts. Whereas the memo is broad, it takes specific goal at immigration legal professionals, professional bono attorneys representing asylum seekers in immigration court docket, and organizations (such because the American Immigration Council) that problem the federal authorities’s immigration insurance policies in court docket.
The memo accuses attorneys of deliberately teaching our shoppers to lie in court docket so as “circumvent” our legal guidelines. It goes as far as to put the tragic deaths of people like Laken Riley on the toes of immigration attorneys, suggesting we’re diverting assets from legislation enforcement that might have in any other case protected her. In addition to being objectively absurd, these assaults have solely made immigration attorneys extra dedicated to our shoppers and guaranteeing they get their day in court docket.
As the idea for the assault on attorneys, the memo cites to normal guidelines {of professional} accountability and guidelines of process that attorneys already should observe. Legal professionals are prohibited from knowingly submitting false or frivolous claims in each immigration courts and federal courts. There are already guidelines in place that enable a choose or different entity to sanction the lawyer, like taking away an lawyer’s license or not permitting them to proceed representing shoppers within the immigration courts. Although the memo doesn’t create any new guidelines, it does direct components of the federal authorities to research attorneys and lays the inspiration for what’s more likely to be an intimidation marketing campaign aimed toward professionals who’re representing a number of the most susceptible shoppers in our authorized system.
The March 22 memo comes amidst a number of others concentrating on legislation companies which have challenged the present or prior Trump administration in quite a lot of methods. In an unprecedented use of government energy, the White Home stripped safety clearances, restricted authorities contracts, and in any other case interfered with a number of legislation companies. Of specific curiosity appear to be any legislation companies that have been concerned in one of many many investigations into Trump’s purported malfeasance. This features a agency concerned within the Mueller investigation, and Perkins Coie who represented Hilary Clinton and different Democratic Occasion entities. arty entities.
This isn’t the primary time a Trump administration has taken goal at immigration attorneys. In 2017, then Lawyer Common Jeff Periods, the Division of Justice official accountable for the immigration courts and the disciplinary procedures in opposition to immigration attorneys, made comparable statements, declaring us “soiled immigration legal professionals” who have been gaming the system. In 2019, a leaked doc from the federal authorities listed 59 individuals, together with a number of immigration legal professionals, as individuals whose passports needs to be flagged for investigation in the event that they try and cross the southern border. A number of immigration attorneys have been detained and questioned. Throughout that point, volunteer attorneys with our Immigration Justice Marketing campaign exploded to a pool of almost 8,000.
Attorneys representing asylum seekers in immigration court docket and difficult the federal government’s unlawful practices are essential to sustaining a modicum of due course of and equity in our immigration system. And as we did throughout the first Trump administration, the American Immigration Council will proceed the essential work of its litigation group and the Immigration Justice Marketing campaign. As legal professionals like to say: we’ll see you in court docket.
In case you’re dedicated to our mission of offering professional bono illustration for immigrants who would in any other case go unrepresented, we want you within the Immigration Justice Marketing campaign. Learn to volunteer as an lawyer, interpreter, or translator.
FILED UNDER: Trump administration
