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Since 2005, unaccompanied minors summoned before a judge face an 83 percent chance of deportation either by removal order or voluntary departure, according to the Transactional Access Records Clearninghouse, a Syracuse University-based project that tracks data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies.
Between 2005 and June, 4,143 out of 4,965 unaccompanied juveniles who went before Texas immigration judges were deported — a rate three times as high as in California with 1,149 deportations, the second-highest number of unaccompanied minor deportations, according to the TRAC data.
Garcia attributes greater deportation numbers in Texas due to lack of representation in immigration court. Unlike the criminal justice system, federal law does not mandate indigent legal representation for immigration cases.
In Texas, there are more than 2,100 unaccompanied minors without legal representation, according to TRAC.
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