This fall, CAIR Coalition welcomed Stephen Dekovich, a graduate of Stanford Law School and newly minted Equal Justice Works Fellow. Stephen, whose fellowship is sponsored by the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery, will be spending the next two years working on a project to improve access to pro bono counsel for detained immigrants in removal proceedings who have mental disabilities that impair their ability to advocate for themselves.
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.
