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In the US criminal justice system, if you are charged with a crime, you have the right to government-appointed counsel; and if you are convicted and sentenced, you have the right to know the term of your incarceration. But immigration detention isn’t criminal incarceration; it’s civil. If you are a noncitizen, unless you have a serious mental disability, you do not have the right to appointed counsel, though the government always has an attorney. Nor do you know how long you’re going to be in custody. According to statistics released last year by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering center at Syracuse University, a woman with children is 14 times less likely to be ordered deported if she is represented.
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