Justice Dept to Stop Legal Orientation Program for Detained Immigrants

Maria Sacchetti reports in the Washington Post that Justice Department plans o suspend the Legal Orientation Program (LOP), one of the few mechanisms by which detained immigrants facing deportation can access legal advice about their cases.  It is well known that immigrants in removal proceedings have no right to appointed counsel funded by the federal government.  Administered by the Vera Institute of Justice, LOP provides information sessions to detained immigrants about their rights and options under the immigration laws.  Vera also administers a legal “help desk” that offers advice to immigrants in certain immigration courts.  But both programs will be suspended in order to evaluate the program’s cost-effectiveness.

Strong condemnations of the Justice Department’s decision have already emerged.   The National Immigrant Justice Center’s  Executive Director Tara Tidwell Cullen states that terminating the LOP program is “an affront to Congress,” given that the 2018 omnibus spending bill required EOIR to continue ongoing operations, including LOP; amounts to a “deliberate attempt to eliminate due process from the deportation process,” particularly in light of the recent imposition of case completion quotas on immigration judges; and “an act of flagrant fiscal irresponsibility,” particularly given that a 2012 DOJ study highlighted the cost savings resulting from the LOP program.  Others on social media have decried the cruelty of this development, and its role in facilitating the federal government’s mass deportation agenda.

-JKoh