The U.S. Supreme Court recently held in Turner v. Rogers, 131 S.Ct. 2507 (June 20, 2011), that indigent jailed “deadbeat dads” are not automatically entitled to a court-appointed lawyer. Yet Turner‘s reasoning may support appointed counsel for different indigents—the hundreds of thousands of immigrants detained yearly pending deportation proceedings, many from the New York area.
Immigration detention—or “immcarceration,” as some call it—causes green card holders (“lawful permanent residents”) living here with jobs and families to be locked away every day, most surprisingly without ever seeing a lawyer.1 In 2009, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained over 380,000 aliens for various immigration violations, most in jails and prisons or detention centers much like them.2
