 |
|
82 percent of more than 16,000 Central American women screened by asylum officers after crossing the border were found to have a credible fear of persecution if they return to their home countries, a criteria for applying for asylum, according to government statistics.
Yet only 30 percent of 26,300 Central American mothers with children who arrived after 2014 had attorneys, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Without counsel, only 1.5 percent were allowed to stay compared to more than a quarter of those with attorneys.
"This whole issue shows yet again how important it is to have good representation" said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the then-U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "The whole system moves much more efficiently both for people with hearings in the courts and for the enforcement agencies if there's representation."
|
|
|
|
