A federal court has ruled – unanimously – that illegal immigrant children are not entitled to government-paid attorneys during their deportation case.
The three-judge panel of the liberal Ninth Circuit upheld a previous immigration judge’s ruling to deny asylum to an illegal immigrant minor who left Honduras at 13 after being threatened by local gangs.
The boy, named C.J.L.G. in court documents, did not have a lawyer and his mother was unable to get pro-bono legal services.
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The Ninth Circuit said that federal law does not guarantee state-paid defense attorneys for children in immigrant court and that the boy failed to show he needed a lawyer to safeguard his rights.
“Mandating free court-appointed counsel could further strain an already overextended immigration system,” wrote Judge Consuelo M. Callahan, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.
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The decision was a shocker to immigration activists, who have tried for years to get lawyers for juveniles facing deportation.
“It is a brutal decision,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California. “It is brutal for him and also brutal for thousands of other children who have fled three of the most violent countries on Earth — Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.”
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He told the Los Angeles Times that most of the minors facing deportation proceedings without lawyers came to the U.S. to escape violence in those three countries.
In the ruling – handed down Monday – the Ninth Circuit said they had sympathy for the young teenager, but that the law did not support his case.
He was picked up by immigration authorities four days after he and his mother crossed the border in 2014. They were held in custody in Los Angeles.
The immigration judge repeatedly told the mother that she was entitled to a lawyer, the court indicated, but she said she could not support one. In the end, she filled out the asylum paperwork herself.
“The application contains threadbare statements in support of C.J.’s asylum claim and much of what is written is borderline inscrutable and nonresponsive,” the 9th Circuit said.
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The mother based her son’s request for asylum on threats by the Mara gang.
The boy “repeatedly spurned” efforts by the gang to recruit him, despite death threats made against him and his family, the 9th Circuit said. “After the Maras threatened C.J. at gunpoint, C.J. and his mother, Maria, fled Honduras.”
The ACLU eventually took on the case, arguing that all illegal immigrant minors should be afforded lawyers if they can not afford to hire one.
“The decision is incorrect and also just defies common sense,” Arulanantham said. “It is just sort of obvious that a child cannot get a fair hearing in a deportation case, particularly one as complicated as his … without a lawyer.”
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In the ruling, the court said they know the boy will likely be returned to a “country in turmoil” but that the law doesn’t “support his request relief.
“We sympathize with his personal plight, as C.J. appears to have displayed courage in the face of serious adversity,” Callahan wrote.
But the law is the law.
The ACLU may still appeal the case.
