NY City Bar Analysis of Appointed Counsel, Due Process & Detention S. 744 Amendments

Mark Noferi (Brooklyn) provided this information for teh blog:The New York City Bar Association Immigration and Nationality Committee, chaired by Lenni Benson of New York Law School, has issued its analysis of recent amendments to S. 744 that relate to appointed counsel, due process, and detention. The analysis can be accessed here.

The City Bar analyzes nine amendments that, collectively, would roll back many of S. 744’s advances for increased due process and reduced detention. Those amendments are:

- Grassley Amendments 47, 51, and 53: Would strike sections providing for detention reforms, such as due process, bond hearings, alternatives to detention, and detention limits, and reinstate and expand mandatory detention, without any time limit.

- Grassley Amendment 41: Would eliminate the new proposed Office of Legal Access Programs, to oversee the Legal Orientation Program for detainees.

- Grassley Amendment 40: Would make appointed counsel discretionary, not mandatory, for children and the mentally ill, and strike language providing for counsel to the “particularly vulnerable.”

- Sessions Amendment 12: Would raise the artificial minimum bond to $5,000 for certain non-Mexican or non-Canadian immigrants not admitted or paroled (such as asylum seekers).

- Grassley Amendments 39, 48: Would require General Accounting Office studies as a precursor to funding immigration court improvements, when many studies already exist.

- Grassley Amendment 42: Would strike the new requirement for three-judge decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals, and reinstate the current system of single-judge BIA decisions.

City Bar opposes all these amendments.

Additionally, at crimmigration.com, I have a guest blog post today summarizing this City Bar analysis in greater detail. Today’s post is on appointed counsel and due process, and tomorrow’s will be on detention.  

KJ