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Without a lawyer, there is slim chance to make use of the various avenues the notoriously complex immigration law offers to fend off deportation or to challenge the possibility of spending months or years of waiting in jail. Studies have shown that an immigration detainee with a lawyer has more than 10 times the chance of prevailing—over 1,000 percent, that is—compared to someone who is unrepresented, like Banos. Those who were never detained have more than triple the chance to prevail with a lawyer.
This inequity started long before the Trump administration, but President Donald Trump’s push to arrest and detain many more undocumented immigrants will likely aggravate it. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, the backlog in immigration courts swelled to 600,000 cases as of May 31, growing 21 percent in a year.
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