For Immigrants Seeking a “Chance to Come Home,” a Gap in Process and Representation
As part of the Make Our Voices Heard campaign granted by the New York Community Trust, Immigrant ARC curated guest blog posts, each written by one of our members. These insightful and informative pieces highlight their insights, learnings, and recommendations around the current issues in immigration and immigration legal services. The posts reflect only the views of the member organization authoring them, and don't necessarily reflect the views of I-ARC, or our coalition as a whole.
***
By a staff member of the National Immigrant Justice Center
Leonel Pinilla has not seen his family in 10 years, since he was deported to Panama because two low-level marijuana convictions – now legal conduct in New York State – prevented him from seeking relief.
In his absence, Leonel’s daughter must provide for his disabled wife and stepson along with her own young family. Leonel fears for his family’s wellbeing, but also for his own safety in the unstable region where he is forced to reside. But he has not given up hope. He has motions pending in the appellate courts seeking to overturn his unjust deportation order and give him a chance to reunite with his loved ones in the United States.
This month, the National Immigrant Justice Center relaunched the Chance to Come Home campaign – an advocacy effort focused on creating a fair and efficient process to overturn unjust deportations like Leonel’s. As the campaign’s white paper describes, the current process for reversing deportation orders requires immigrants to make applications before appellate bodies that are highly deferential to the immigration courts’ original orders. In one federal circuit, the court refuses to entertain such applications altogether. In the others, the extremely high bar to reversal becomes next to – though not entirely – impossible once an immigrant has actually left the country. The Chance to Come Home campaign lays out a comprehensive proposal that could change that, and take a step toward rectifying the rash of punitive deportations based on overbroad standards of criminal conduct that have disparately impacted Black and Brown immigrants.
There is not yet light at the end of the tunnel for Leonel Pinilla, but he may be considered one of the lucky ones. This is because he has a lawyer fighting with him, navigating the legally complex avenue toward relief and, hopefully, return to the U.S. As Leonel’s attorney, Jill Applegate, a Skadden Fellow at Neighborhood Defender Service, wrote in the New York Times, there is no dedicated funding for post-deportation representation of immigrants. And the already-stretched legal services providers are unlikely to take on the heavy lift required for these cases. For people like Leonel, though, the only hope of overturning an unjust deportation hinges on free legal assistance.
In order to truly give Leonel, and so many others, a Chance to Come Home, access to free legal representation is essential. The state and federal government must recognize this need along with policy changes that will ensure meaningful process both to reverse unjust deportations and prevent them from occurring in the first place.
