Legal Group Helping Immigrants Facing Deportation Grows

A year-and-a-half ago, Madison’s Community Immigration Law Center couldn’t find clients. But as word spread — and issues surrounding immigration in the United States grew more divisive — the group had more clients than it could handle.

CILC provides free legal services to immigrants facing deportation. Madison’s immigrant community makes up about 7 percent of the city’s total population. More than 27,000 people living in Madison without U.S. citizenship are at potential risk for deportation, according to CILC. In Wisconsin, that number rises to 155,500.

While there’s been considerable attention to asylum seekers crossing the Mexican border into the U.S., most of CILC’s cases are residents who have lived in the area for an average of eight years.

“Eighty percent are folks who live here and are getting picked up for deportation are on their way to work or taking kids to school,” explained CILC’s board president Grant Sovern.

Sovern said customs agents also go to courthouses where they target immigrants who are seeking restraining orders for domestic violence, or fighting an eviction notice.

The Vera Institute of Justice, an organization that advocates for immigrants, says people who are represented in deportation proceedings are up to 10 times more likely to remain in the U.S. legally.

In 2017, Dane County became part of a nationwide network helping immigrants facing deportation. That network, organized by the Vera Institute, is called the Safety and Fairness for Everyone (SAFE) Network.

CILC and University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School’s Immigrant Justice Clinic got a $100,000 grant from the Vera Institute to provide public defense to immigrants in Dane County facing deportation. The City of Madison and Dane County have also contributed a total of $170,000 this year.

The funding has allowed the organization to hire additional staff to help those facing deportation.

In the last year and half, CILC has represented 53 clients and completed 11 deportation cases, more than half successfully.

There has been increased ICE enforcement in Dane County under the Trump administration according to Aissa Olivarez, managing attorney at CILC. While the Obama administration was focused on immigrants who had been convicted of violent crimes, she said President Donald Trump has had a broader focus on immigrants living in the country without documentation, whether or not they’ve been accused of criminal activity.

“The result of that policy is more arrests at the courthouse and in our communities as a result of this enforcement policy from the Trump administration,” she said.

The only other agency in Wisconsin that represents people in immigration court who can’t afford a lawyer is Catholic Charities in Milwaukee.

Deportation hearings are civil matters, not criminal. So no attorney is provided if a person can’t afford one.

“We’re going to get to that point of really saying this is public defenders service and we’re going to represent everybody in Dane County who is threatened with deportation,” Sovern said. “That’s our goal.”