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Who Is Represented in Immigration Court?

“Many factors impact the odds that an individual can obtain representation in Immigration Court. Using very recent case-by-case court records, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University has just completed a detailed analysis examining how the odds of representation varies with the particular court and hearing location, the nationality and custody status of the immigrant, and the length of time the person has been in the U.S. Cases are followed so the ultimate outcome of each case can be linked to whether the individual was represented or not. Among the highlights are the impact of nationality and detention status on whether or not persons obtain representation. Individuals from Mexico generally had the lowest representation rates, while those from China had the highest. Representation rates for detained individuals have ranged between roughly 10 and 30 percent, and after falling from 2000 – 2005, stabilized for several years before they began to steadily improve from 2009 onward, leveling out during 2015 – 2017 at slightly about 30 percent. Representation rates for those who were never detained in contrast have generally ranged between 60 and 80 percent. A new interactive free web-tool provides access to these detailed statistics TRAC has compiled on each of these factors: http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/nta/ It joins another tool TRAC recently developed that allows anyone to look up relevant statistics on representation by a person’s address. This earlier companion tool provides much greater geographic detail than our latest tool, revealing how variable representation rates are within the same state depending upon the particular county and community in which individuals reside. http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/addressrep/.”

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