![]() ![]() In December, Olivarez estimated that about one-third of the detainees at Dodge entered the country legally as asylum seekers, but their claims had not yet been decided. Others overstayed visas or had green cards allowing them to live and work in the United States but were convicted of crimes that could make them deportable. Immigration attorney Aissa Olivarez said the majority of the immigrants detained at Dodge, the facility she typically serves, are undocumented people who were not apprehended by Border Patrol. ICE also is looking to add another facility within 100 miles of its field office in Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains immigrants at two Wisconsin facilities housed within the Dodge County Detention Facility in Juneau and Kenosha County Detention Center in Kenosha. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to move 330,211 cases previously closed by judges back to the immigration courts’ roll of pending cases. The backlog was fueled by the decision by then-U.S. ![]() Since President Donald Trump took office, the immigration court's "active backlog" has grown by nearly 50%, reaching a record high of 869,013 as of March, according to TRAC data. More than 1 million immigrants and asylum seekers are facing deportation nationwide, including 3,700 people from Wisconsin. At that hearing, his application for relief based on the likelihood of facing danger in his home country was denied. He was ordered to be detained until his deportation hearing in January. In Wisconsin, the figure is 42%.Īt the hearing, Olivarez's client appeared by video from jail on a large screen in the courtroom as the immigration judge decided whether to release him on bond. On average, about half of immigrants nationwide do not have lawyers. Individuals facing deportation have a right to legal representation - but only if they can afford it. They may have committed a crime - ranging from heinous to minor - or no crime besides entering the United States illegally, an offense that can bring a small fine or up to six months in jail.ĭane County is one of 13 jurisdictions around the country chosen for a new program that aims to give detained immigrants access to an attorney. These are people who cook at restaurants, take care of dairy cows, clean office buildings, landscape yards and put shingles on roofs, among many other jobs. Olivarez works for the Community Immigration Law Center, a partially taxpayer-funded program based in Madison that provides free and low-cost legal services to some of Wisconsin's detained immigrants. Cases that began since 2015 were omitted from the analysis because so many of them have not yet been decided. Nationally, the picture is similar: Immigrants without lawyers had an average success rate of less than 8%. ![]() Nearly 55% of those with lawyers were allowed to stay compared to 9% of immigrants without lawyers. In 2018, about two-thirds of immigrants who were held in detention ahead of their deportation hearings did not have lawyers, making them more likely to remain in detention and, ultimately, be removed from the United States, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis.Īnalyzing data compiled by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, Wisconsin Watch found that of Wisconsin residents whose cases began between 20, those who had lawyers were more than six times as likely to be allowed to stay in the country as those without. In a way, though, Olivarez's client had an advantage. Olivarez told the client's family to prepare for the worst. She knew that did not bode well for his chances of being released on bond. citizens, had five drunken-driving arrests on his record. This client, a Latin American who has been in the United States for 18 years and whose children are all U.S. She is one of just two immigration attorneys in Dane County who represent detained clients for free, part of a national pilot program that aims to provide free lawyers to immigrants. Olivarez travels to the Chicago court as often as a couple of times a week. at the Chicago Immigration Court - the designated court for the roughly 300 people held in immigration detention in Wisconsin. She drove an hour and 40 minutes to Elgin, Illinois, and got on the commuter train, arriving before 9 a.m. It was nearly three hours before sunrise on a frigid October morning when immigration attorney Aissa Olivarez climbed into her Honda CR-V and left her Madison apartment.
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