Immigrants in Georgia's detention centers will soon find it difficult to get lawyers to help them in immigration court, making it harder for many to avoid deportation.
Legal and advocacy group the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) announced earlier this month that it will stop providing legal help to detained migrants in Georgia, which they have been doing since 2017, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
SPLC lawyers were the only ones offering pro bono legal representation at the immigration court in Stewart Detention Center, a private jail in Lumpkin located near the Florida border, as per the U.S. Department of Justice.
The group's lawyers also worked with detained migrants in Louisiana, which was another non-border state with the biggest population of detained migrants nationwide, alongside Georgia.
Most of the migrants in the detention center are recent border crossers caught by Border Patrol.
Unlike in criminal courts, people in immigration courts do not have the right to a government-provided lawyer if they can't afford one. Many migrants can't afford private attorneys, especially after going into debt to reach the U.S. border.
Free legal help is hard to find across the country, as the requirement is much higher than the available resources, especially after recent large increases in border crossings.
It's even harder to find free lawyers in a rural place like Lumpkin.
Lumpkin-based SIFI (Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative) attorney Erin Argueta said, "It was a shock to get the news. I feel great sadness for my colleagues, and I also feel terrible for the people detained. Our number was the only one they could call that provides pro bono, direct service representation," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Argueta pointed out that it was devastating to learn that the resource, which was never enough, was gone overnight. Senior project coordinator at SIFI Monica Whatley stressed that this decision will leave a "huge justice gap."
A professor at the University of Georgia School of Law Jason Cade said, "Detained immigrants in Georgia tend to be held in remote areas, cut off from society, making it really difficult for them to access representation or have contact with family."
"SIFI was essentially the only resource that existed to help them, and they did excellent work."
Immigrant detention in Georgia witnessed a surge of more than 50%, as per an analysis of federal data by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
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