The Worcester County Jail, located on the Eastern Shore, holds the largest concentration of immigrant detainees in Maryland.  However, due to its remote location, it was not being served by any immigrant service provider.  Now, the immigrant detainees there will have access to much needed legal assistance.  In addition to serving the facility in Snow Hill, CAIR Coalition will continue to provide legal services to immigrants detained at the Howard County Detention Center and the Frederick County Detention Center which hold roughly 70 and 50 detainees respectively.  With the addition of the facility in Snow Hill, CAIR Coalition will now be serving nearly 300 immigrant detainees in Maryland.

Along with our increased presence in Maryland detention centers we have also expanded our law school partnerships.  Currently, American University’s Washington College of Law provides CAIR Coalition with a core group of volunteers that accompany staff on every Frederick and Howard visit and assist in following up with detainee cases.  Starting in February, students from The University of Maryland Law School will also begin assisting us with Maryland cases.  They will review files in the Baltimore Immigration Court on behalf of detainees whose cases we are attempting to place and they will assist us with Reasonable and Credible Fear Interviews held in Baltimore.  They will also join us on visits to the detention center in Snow Hill to help with intake.

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GA is a Christian member of the Dinka tribe. When he was nine years old, the Janjaweed attacked his village, and as GA fled he was separated from his family. GA walked for months to reach a refugee camp in Ethiopia, from which he was also displaced by fighting. GA eventually fled to Kenya where he lived in a refugee camp for nine years until he was granted refugee status and arrived in the United States. GA later became to a legal permanent resident.

The severe trauma GA had suffered as a young child negatively impacted his ability to adjust to life in the United States. He eventually became homeless and was arrested several times for minor offenses.  He was detained by ICE in December 2010 and put into removal proceedings. CAIR Coalition met with GA soon after and placed his case with Nancy Hull and Karthik Nagarajan of White & Case.  GA spent the next year in detention as Ms. Hull and Mr. Nagarajan fought to keep him from being deported.

Ms. Hull and Mr. Nagarajan faced challenges in GA’s case because of the changing country conditions in South Sudan. The immigration court hearing, originally scheduled for the week prior to South Sudan’s Independence Day, was ultimately delayed and took place one month after independence.

The government argued that GA no longer faced any harm if he was deported given South Sudan’s newly won independence. GA’s pro bono attorneys succeeded in locating an expert who refuted the government’s assertion that GA would now be safe in South Sudan.  The expert’s testimony proved to be a critical factor in the Immigration Judge’s decision to grant Withholding of Removal.

After GA was granted relief, Ms. Hull and Mr. Nagarajan collaborated with Hannah Kane, CAIR Coalition’s first Masters of Social Work intern from George Mason University, in order to secure social services for GA and to help him make a smooth reentry into society.

GA was taken to an emergency shelter in Arlington, with a referral for a transitional housing program for ex-offenders. GA was also referred to Offender Aid and Restoration (OAR) of Arlington County, located within walking distance to the shelter, and which provides reentry services, including transportation assistance, employment services, emergency food and clothing, and social service referrals. GA has received his employment authorization document and is eager to begin working again.

According to Ms. Hull and Mr. Nagarajan, “Working on [GA’s] case served as an eye-opener to us on the challenges faced by non-citizens trying to navigate the U.S. immigration system.  Personally, both of us were thankful that we were able to assist [GA} with CAIR's [Coalition’s] active support, in securing his freedom.  Professionally, we greatly benefitted from the experience of working directly with a client to present his story to the Immigration Judge both in our legal brief and in testimony at the oral hearing… This was an educational and very rewarding experience for both of us.”

CAIR Coalition is very grateful to Ms. Hull and Mr. Nagarajan for their tireless efforts on behalf of GA.

When Pedro arrived in the U.S. in 2011 he immediately requested asylum – and was promptly detained.  Current U.S. law mandates the detention of all arriving asylum seekers.  If an arriving asylum seeker passes what is called a “credible fear” interview, he or she is then permitted to apply for asylum before an immigration judge.  However, in many cases, the individual remains detained pending their asylum hearing.

CAIR Coalition assists arriving asylum seekers with the credible fear interview process, letting them know what to expect and providing a volunteer or in-house attorney to accompany them to the interview.  CAIR Coalition staff attorney Amar Nair assisted Pedro with his interview which he passed.  CAIR Coalition then found a pro bono attorney for Pedro, placing his case with Stacey Tyrewala at the law firm of Alston & Bird.  Ms. Tyrewala assisted Pedro in getting paroled from detention and subsequently won his asylum case.

Click here to watch the video.

This legislation, co-sponsored by all thirteen council members, would direct the DC Department of Corrections to honor ICE detainer requests only for individuals who have been convicted of violent crimes.  In addition, the bill requires ICE to collect the individual within 24 hours after the completion of the individual’s criminal proceedings and to pay for the additional period of detention. The bill mirrors those passed in New York City, Cook County, IL and Santa Clara, CA.

Advocates and community members spoke out on the impact of Secure Communities on domestic violence survivors, public safety, and the program’s fiscal impact. Addressing the issue of public safety, Ms. Doan shared the story of an immigrant CAIR Coalition staff met in detention who had been placed in ICE custody in Virginia (where the Secure Communities program operates statewide) after calling the police to report a hit and run accident.  As Ms. Doan testified, “We do not want these stories to start circulating in DC. We want District residents to reach for the phone without hesitation when they or someone else needs help.”

Ms. Doan further testified that “Currently, only a small percentage of immigrant detainees in Virginia are from the District.  However, we can expect this number to grow significantly if the DC Council fails to pass the Immigration Detainer Compliance Amendment Act of 2012.”

Knowing that a child will be transferred to another jurisdiction has made it difficult for CAIR Coalition to place a case with a pro bono attorney. Recognizing this challenge, CAIR Coalition has partnered with several law firms with offices in Washington, D.C., that also have offices throughout the country. This serves a dual purpose. First, the child has continuous legal representation at all stages of their case, even if it is in another city. Second, the child’s trust and confidence are not lost with a transfer because the law firm’s offices communicate internally to ensure seamless transfer to the next pro bono attorney.

CAIR Coalition recently placed two cases with pro bono counsel pursuant to this new model, including the case of a child who was recently transferred to California from Virginia.  Thanks to the new model, CAIR Coalition was able to insure that she received continued legal representation despite being transferred across the county.

Stephen’s project consists of four components that are designed to produce replicable and sustainable results in this area of immigration law.  Together, the goal is to expand access to the pro bono representation that is needed to protect the rights and safeguard the dignity of immigrants with mental disabilities in the D.C. area and nationally.

The four components of Stephen’s include the following:

I.   Direct Legal Representation.

The first component of the project is to build a caseload of 10-12 detained clients whose cases either present important due process questions that have yet to be resolved or provide opportunities for education and advocacy with Immigration Judges and Department of Homeland Security attorneys.

Currently, Stephen is providing direct representation for three clients.  These include an appeal to the BIA from a Baltimore Immigration Judge’s denial of asylum on behalf of a man from Tanzania who has a history of severe mental illness and who was subject to months of inhumane conditions and unprovoked physical violence at the hands of hospital workers in Tanzania.  Another one of Stephen’s clients is a young man and long term resident of the United States from the Philippines who was doing very well in a day treatment program when he was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and detained in a Virginia jail.   The third client is a Somali refugee who recently won protection under the Convention Against Torture but who remains detained because of his mental health.

II.   Recruitment and Training of Pro Bono Attorneys.

The second component of the project is to conduct a training locally and as a webinar on a quarterly basis with a target of recruiting 20 advocates and attorneys for each training.  Written and audio/visual materials developed for the training will then be made freely available online for advocates to use around the country.

At this early stage, Stephen is work on identifying potential members of an advisory committee which will consist of  members who bring expertise in different substantive areas that these types of mental health cases touch, such as disability rights, criminal defense, legal ethics, and psychiatry/psychology.

III.   Online Resource Bank.

The third component of the project involves creating and maintaining a comprehensive and freely available online brief bank of disability-specific materials that will be easily accessible for attorneys who are representing detained immigrants with mental disabilities.

IV.   Practice Manual.

The final component of the project is to write and distribute a revised edition of CAIR Coalition’s “Practice Manual for Pro Bono Attorneys Representing Detained Clients with Mental Disabilities in Immigration Court.”  The revision of the manual, which is now in use nationwide, will include any legislative and regulatory changes or developments in the case law that will have taken place since it was originally compiled in 2008.

CAIR Coalition collaborated closely with Stephen as he developed his project and we are very excited to have him begin work on it.  We anticipate that the Mental Health project will not only greatly benefit individual immigrant detainees suffering from mental illness, but that it will also help to reform a legal system that is utterly lacking in its ability to safeguard the rights and dignity of this vulnerable population.

Unfortunately, an overwhelming majority of unaccompanied immigrant children who   find themselves in immigration detention are caught fleeing some sort of danger, whether it be danger in their home countries or danger in the U.S.  Many of the children we work with are victims of gang violence, domestic violence, rape, torture, human and labor trafficking, and abandonment by their parents. These topics can be incredibly difficult for the children to discuss, and many children are reluctant to see themselves as victims.

In response to this challenge, CAIR Coalition decided to combine the effectiveness of storytelling with graphic art. Staff attorneys Ashley Ham Pong and Amar Nair, and legal assistant Marisa Landin, teamed up to create two stories, a U-visa and T-visa, with colorful, striking graphics that appeal to youth. The T-visa discusses the story of Cynthia, a 16 year old girl from El Salvador who is trafficked for sex by her cousin, while the U-visa discusses the story of Pablo, a 16 year old Honduran boy who is attacked by gangs and domestically abused by his father. Each story also includes general information about the T and U visa and is based on the real-life experiences of the children we have met in detention.

Thanks to funding from the Vera Institute of Justice, CAIR Coalition was able to print these two stories in both English and Spanish. These materials are now available to other Vera legal service providers and will be on our website soon. However, many of our most popular forms of relief-such as asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile status, labor T-visa-have yet to be translated to this graphic novel form. CAIR Coalition’s goal is to complete the series so that many more of our minors can discuss their trauma and be informed about the various forms of relief available to them.

Almost immediately after arriving in the U.S., Ana’s cousin took her to the home of his friend’s family.  At her new house Ana was forced to work from dawn until late hours of the night.  She did almost all of the household chores and worked in a toy factory across the street.  All Ana’s paychecks went to her cousin.  If she ever complained or asked about his promise of enrolling her in a school, he would yell at her that she owed him a lot of money for bringing her to the U.S.  A few months later, Ana’s cousin introduced her to another male friend, who repeatedly raped and sexually molested her, and gave Ana’s cousin money for Ana’s “services.”  Ana’s cries were met with her cousin’s threats of deportation, and so Ana suffered in silence and spent many nights wanting to end her life.

In early 2010, Ana and her cousin were stopped and questioned by the police about their legal status.  Being illegally here, they were handed over to immigration.  Ana was transferred to a juvenile facility in Virginia where staff from our Detained Immigrant Children’s program met her.  Program staff developed a trusting relationship with Ana and discovered she had given immigration a false name and date of birth.  Based on her false birth date, she was scheduled to be transferred to an adult facility in a week and would be ineligible for certain relief only available to minors.  Program staff worked quickly and closely with the Honduran consulate to obtain Ana’s birth certificate, which allowed Ana to remain in a juvenile facility.

CAIR Coalition continued helping Ana with her immigration case and wrote an extensive declaration for her.  When she was transferred to juvenile facility in another state due to her therapeutic needs, CAIR Coalition worked closely with her new attorneys to make sure that Ana would continue to be represented.  In June, Ana received a dependency order, a requirement for the Special Immigration Juvenile visa that will practically guarantee her a green card.  Her attorneys called CAIR Coalition to thank us for obtaining Ana’s birth certificate and writing the detailed declaration that they used to secure the dependency order.

Ana recently received a full scholarship to attend art school.  She still maintains a close relationship with CAIR Coalition and regularly calls us to report her successes.  She looks forward to very soon being able to reside legally in the United States.