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Roughly just one in three unaccompanied children entering the U.S. illegally are represented by an attorney by the time they make their way to the Immigration Courts system.
A new Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University analysis finds that of the 63,721 such cases as of late October 2014 only 32 percent of the youths had legal representation. In addition of the 21,588 cases involving children that have been adjudicated since the surge of minors pouring into the U.S. from Central America since 2012, only 41 percent had representation.
Over the last decade or so, TRAC officials have deemed the distinction of having an attorney or not as the most significant factor impacting a case's outcome. More precisely, researchers found in 73 percent of all the cases where the child was legally represented the court system allowed the youth to remain in the U.S., compared to just 12 percent of legally represented defendants who were ordered removed.
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