A Real Scandal

Four weeks ago, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP)—a respected nonprofit in Seattle that represents immigrants in deportation proceedings—received a “cease and desist” letter from the DOJ threatening disciplinary action. The letter demanded that NWIRP drop representation of its clients and close down its asylum-advisory program. The reason: a technicality, perversely applied. NWIRP is accused of breaking a rule that was put in place to protect people from lawyers or “notarios” who take their money and then drop their case.

[...]

 NWIRP doesn’t know why it was singled out. But we do know that NWIRP has been at the forefront of resisting Trump’s travel ban. Its staff and volunteer lawyers were at SeaTac airport immediately after the White House launched the first Muslim ban, and in March it sued to block the second Muslim ban.

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The outcome of this legal battle will profoundly impact access to legal representation for the tens of thousands of immigrants who apply for asylum in the United States every year and the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants whose cases are currently in front of an immigration judge.

[...]

 You have no right to counsel in immigration proceedings. If you are not a citizen—or if the government merely alleges you aren’t—you can be taken from your home, jailed, and permanently deported without ever seeing a lawyer. This is perfectly legal. It happened to more than a million people under the Obama administration.

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 On the last day of President Obama’s term, nearly half a million people were in immigration court proceedings, which one judge describes as “death penalty trials in a traffic court setting.” Most of them had no lawyer, and the vast majority of them had committed no crime. [...]  (That is the reason you don’t get a lawyer: The familiar promise of “if you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you” only applies to people accused of crimes.)


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 NWIRP and its peers around the country have had longstanding agreements with immigration officials that permit them to run asylum-assistance programs without committing to permanent representation.

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There are thousands [others] unqualified and dishonest scoundrels who steal money from immigrants too vulnerable to report them. And it is these thieves and cheats that the DoJ’s rules were meant to protect immigrants from. But in Jeff Sessions’s DoJ, the Disciplinary Review office of the Executive Office of Immigration Review is instead pursuing NWIRP, and will soon come after other non-profits. The accusation is that because NWIRP provides advice and assistance to people in immigration proceedings without committing to full representation, it is violating the rules.

It’s a Kafkaesque system: The government won’t provide immigrant defendants with legal representation, and they are allowed to get help for free only if they find a lawyer who will commit up-front to a case that will stretch on for years.

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When lawyers rushed to airports this winter to protect our friends, our neighbors, and our Constitution, people cheered. The Trump administration took offense, and now those lawyers are in their cross hairs. The president is taking a sledgehammer to the pillars of our government: the FBI, the Justice Department, the federal courts.
  The Nation

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Department of "Justice"

A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked a Justice Department order that called on a local immigrant-rights organization to stop some of its legal work. His ruling also applies to similar groups around the country.

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In a letter last month, the Justice Department told the [Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP)] it must “cease and desist” providing certain legal assistance to immigrants unless it undertakes full representation of them in court.

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[U.S. District Judge Richard] Jones on Wednesday said the immigrant-rights group showed it would be immediately and irreparably harmed by the government’s action. The cease-and-desist order also would violate the organization’s constitutional rights, including to free speech, the judge ruled.

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Despite a government request to limit his ruling to the group, Jones barred the Justice Department from sending similar orders to any other organizations around the nation.

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During a court recess, the executive director [of NWIRP] Jorge Barón said his group has some of the same questions as the judge: “Why after all these years? “Why now [is the government pursuing this action]?

He noted that both Seattle and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project have gotten a lot of attention in recent months for their support of immigrants and resistance to President Donald Trump’s agenda. Barón and other attorneys with the group, for instance, went to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after Trump issued his first travel ban and were instrumental in stopping immigrants from being turned away. The organization also filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the first and second travel bans, and has held countless “know your rights” presentations.

The government’s cease-and-desist order, Barón said, “gives us concern that this could be retaliation for those activities.”

  Seattle Times

No doubt. Plus, Jeff Sessions is now the head of the DOJ.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.